Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  Jasmine triggered her suit’s systems and charged right across country towards the second bandit position, lowering her weapon and firing round after round towards the mortar operators. The others followed her, sweeping through the bandit position and tearing it apart. A handful of bandits turned to run, only to be shot down as they tried to flee, while others threw their hands up in desperate surrender. The noise of incoming rounds shifted as another enemy position tried to bring its weapons to bear on the Marines, but they hadn’t laid their weapons properly. The shells went wide.

  “They timed this well,” Blake said, as they overran a smaller position. The bandits were scattering now, feeling the weight of the Marines as they moved faster than the bandits could react. “If the destroyers had still been in orbit…”

  Jasmine nodded bitterly, concentrating on shooting down a bandit who was carrying what looked like a homemade antitank rocket. The destroyers could have ended the whole battle by dropping killer crowbars from orbit onto the heads of the bandits, but then … no one on Avalon would ever underestimate the firepower of a single Imperial Navy destroyer. A lone destroyer had ended the Cracker Rebellion; two of them could have scorched the badlands from orbit.

  “2nd Platoon, this is 3rd Lead,” a voice said, on the general frequency. “The bandits are starting to break, but they’re pushing harder at the Guard’s Alpha Company as they leave.”

  “Advance on Alpha Company and relieve them,” Captain Stalker ordered, grimly. Jasmine could understand why. The Civil Guard wasn’t particularly competent by Marine standards, but Alpha and Beta Companies were among their best. Losing them would be painful as hell. They would certainly be impossible to replace within the next few years, at least until the Council dropped its short-sighted insistence on paying its recruits electronically. It wouldn’t be the first time that local authority didn’t seem to know that there was a war on, but this example was particularly odd.

  “Understood,” Faulkner said. 1st and 2nd Platoon reformed and jogged rapidly towards the enemy firing positions, ducking as the enemy brought their heavy weapons around and fired rapidly, trying to keep the Marines back. Jasmine felt the impact of light chemically-propelled weapons and winced, even as she kept moving. They would need something heavier than that to break through even light powered combat armour. “I’m switching to loudspeaker now.”

  Jasmine heard him even though the suit. “THIS IS THE MARINES,” Faulkner thundered. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS. ANYONE HOLDING A WEAPON WILL BE SHOT!”

  A handful of bandits threw down their weapons, but others continued to try to fight or run, knowing what would happen to them once they entered custody. A handful of the surrendering bandits were shot down by their own side, if only to discourage further defections. Jasmine and her platoon moved to cover them, keeping a wary eye on the surrendering bandits as they did so. A fool who picked up a weapon after surrendering would get all of his fellows killed, for nothing.

  She winced as a mortar shell came down on top of them, knocking some of the Marines to the ground and killing some of the surrendering bandits, just before they crested the ridge. It was immediately evident that Alpha Company had driven right into a trap. Jasmine would have picked the same place herself if she’d been planning the manoeuvre. They had restricted fields of fire and limited options. Without the Marines, they would have had to charge their opponents, or die when their ammunition ran out. No one in their right mind would have surrendered to the bandits.

  “Alpha Company is liberated, sir,” Faulkner said. “We’re moving to beat out the remnants of the bandits now…”

  A drone picked up the emission signature, too late. A flare of brilliant white light blazed out of a hidden enemy position and struck a Rifleman dead on. His suit glowed bright white and failed. A second later, he was dead.

  CHAPTER 32

  We don’t leave anyone behind, ever. We account for all of our men. If they are abused in enemy hands, we seek to ensure that the abusers are held to account for their crimes. If they are killed by the enemy, we avenge their deaths. We ask for great sacrifices from our Marines. The least we can do is ensure that their lives—and their deaths—have meaning. A civilian will never understand, but a Marine always will.

  - Master Sergeant Jackson Hendry (Ret), The Meaning of a Marine.

  “Marine down,” a voice snapped. “Captain, we have a Marine down!”

  Edward swore, angrily. It wasn’t the first time that men and women had died under his command, but it was never easy to accept. It was worse, somehow, because he hadn’t been in direct command. Would a young man’s life have been saved if he’d been in command, rather than one of the Lieutenants? Edward had known that it wasn’t going to be easy to deal with the bandits, not as long as they had modern military-grade firepower, yet … he pushed the feelings of rage and grief into a corner of his mind and locked them away firmly. There would be time to deal with them later.

  “Confirmed,” Gwen said. Her voice had gone icy cold. “We got a distress squeal from his suit before it was destroyed. There’s no hope that he survived the blast.”

  Her bluntness helped Edward to focus. Alpha Company had been saved from certain destruction, but that still left Beta Company and then there were the snipers harassing Fort Galahad. The Civil Guard Delta Company was trying to assemble to hunt them down and not having much luck. Edward silently dismissed them from his thoughts and studied the map. The enemy were breaking off and trying to run, but they wouldn’t be allowed to escape. Not now, not after they’d killed a Marine.

  “I want the platoons to move in and relieve Beta Company, and then act as beaters, driving the bastards into our waiting arms,” he ordered, sharply. Hammer and anvil was a military tactic as old as the human race itself, yet the sheer level of firepower available to the Marines and the Civil Guard took it to a whole new dimension. “Warn Lieutenant Faulkner to watch out for ambushes. Those bastards might be trying to lead us into another trap.”

  He studied the map, wondering just what his counterpart was thinking. The ambush of the Civil Guard had been brilliant, yet the enemy plan had fallen apart as soon as it had met the Marines. It spoke of a mind that didn’t have much military experience and had developed a plan that was, simply, too complicated. Edward had gone though the Slaughterhouse OCS and had had a lesson drilled into him; never, even, forget the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid; his instructors had made it very clear. If your complicated plan is working perfectly, they had warned, you are about to lose. The bandits hadn’t realised just how fast the Marines could move across rough ground.

  “And get additional surveillance assets up there,” he added. “I think the bastards have built us a Kratman’s Hill.”

  Gwen blinked, but understood his point. Major-General Thomas Kratman had been Senior Training Officer at the Slaughterhouse four hundred years ago and had been responsible for introducing a number of new training programs. Danger Hill—it had been renamed after him several years after he had died—was, on the surface, a fairly simple training exercise. The Marine squad had to make their way up the hill and capture the flag on top. The first time the exercise was run, squads knew nothing about the hill’s defenders, but when they reran the exercise the following day, they discovered that nothing had changed and they could use their previous experience to know exactly where the defenders were and how they could get up the hill. By the third time, the recruits could have picked the defenders apart for no losses at all …

  And, on the fourth time, the defenders would change everything. They’d reposition their guns, lay new minefields and hide new surprises. A squad that was smart enough not to take anything for granted would probably still be able to take the hill. A squad that didn’t think that anything would have changed—after all, it had been the same three times in a row—would be rapidly destroyed, and then humiliated by the Drill Instructors, who would point out with loving detail just where they had gone wrong. The bandits had built a reserv
e Kratman’s Hill and had hammered the Civil Guard hard. The Marines had nearly fallen into the same trap.

  “And as long as we think they might have HVM launchers left, we can’t bring up the Raptors,” he added, sourly. “Tell them to stay on the deck for now. They’re out of the war until further notice.”

  It was a bitter thought, but it had to be faced. A Raptor couldn’t be constructed on Avalon, not when the best the planet could produce was armoured helicopters from a bygone age. There was no hope of any replacements, not with the Empire largely unconcerned about what happened outside the Core Worlds; a single lost Raptor would have an adverse effect on his command. And, by raising the spectre of antiaircraft missiles lying in wait, the bandits had forced him to take his aircraft out of the game without even shooting down a single Raptor.

  “Yes, sir,” Gwen said.

  -o0o-

  Lucas stared in disbelief as his plans fell apart around him. He hadn’t realised just how fast the Marines could move … hell, he hadn’t realised that the Marines wouldn’t be dumb enough to land where they were supposed to land. If they’d followed his plans, just as the Civil Guard had done, they would have been destroyed … or, at the very least, bled white, giving him time to get the rest of his men out of the combat zone. Now the Marines had saved one Civil Guard force and were moving towards saving the other force.

  He keyed his radio. “Fox, this is Knife,” he said. It wasn’t the most professional of codes, but he was still experimenting with the radios. Now the Marines knew about the shit he’d been sent from Camelot, by his backers, it wouldn’t hurt if they knew about the radios as well. What harm could it do? “Get out of there and start heading back to camp. Now!”

  An explosion billowed out in the distance as the Marines overran one of his positions. It had been a good plan, he told himself, and it had almost worked. He would have to make sure that everyone knew that it had almost worked, or one of the Knives would try to stick a knife in his back. There was no safety or security in being a gang leader. He had had to lead his men onto the battlefield, or they would have refused to stand and wait for the inevitable response from the Civil Guard, let alone the Marines. He might as well have placed his head in a noose.

  Upper-class fuckers, he thought, as he turned to run. If they betrayed me, I can betray them in turn.

  The thought made him smile, for he knew enough about his backers to know that they were important people, too important to risk leaving him in a position to spill his guts to the Marines. They’d rescue him if the Marines took him into custody, if only to prevent him from telling his captors everything. All he had to do was surrender and wait to be liberated on some technicality. He’d certainly been able to recover men from the jail before, just by working with his allies. Smiling, he started to run. Behind him, the noise of explosions grew louder.

  -o0o-

  Lucas had never heard of a stealth remote drone, nor did he know just how effective the sensors mounted on such a drone could be. Lieutenant Faulkner had launched several such drones into the air and one of them was floating high above him, too high to be seen by the naked eye. It was almost invisible to mil-grade sensors; there was literally nothing in the Civil Guard’s arsenal that could have picked up on it, even if they had known that there was a drone in the area.

  “We got a single enemy contact using a radio,” the operator said. She was sitting back in Castle Rock, staring through her drone’s sensors and sifting for useful data. “They’re using Civil Guard-issue tactical radios, but they’re not using an isolated frequency or encryption.”

  Edward smiled tightly. It had been apparent that the bandits had somehow managed to loot a Civil Guard facility … or, more likely, simply bribed the quartermasters to give them whatever they wanted and report the equipment as having been lost. The bandits couldn’t have that many radios, which suggested that the person holding the radio was someone he wanted alive, very much so. And, with the drone following him, taking him alive would be easy.

  “Mark him out for capture when he hits the blocking force,” he ordered. “Pass the word to all of the Marines; I want him alive.”

  -o0o-

  The bandits were running now, some even dropping their weapons as they fled, if only to move quicker. Jasmine wasn’t entirely surprised, although she kept a close eye out for any traps that might have been left in their path. A Marine platoon that was retreating would—naturally—try to strew booby traps around, if only to delay anyone in pursuit. The bandits didn’t seem to have thought of that particular trick. She focused on the pursuit, lifting her rifle and neatly shooting one bandit in the leg, sending him falling to the ground. Leaving traps behind required a certain presence of mind that—so far—the bandits seemed to be lacking.

  “I’m moving the remains of Alpha Company up behind the Marines,” the Civil Guard Major said, over the general frequency. Jasmine scowled inwardly—Captain Stalker had specifically ordered no radio transmissions, if only to prevent the enemy from intercepting the signals—but the Civil Guard had no other choice. Their equipment didn’t do microburst transmissions. “We’ll pick up the prisoners and cart them off to the Fort. You can keep pushing at them.”

  Jasmine checked the update from the satellites as she kept moving, watching for any straggler who tried to go to ground. The bandits attacking Fort Galahad had finally been driven off, even though there had only been a handful of them with primitive weapons. The bandits must have considered them expendable because they hadn’t stood a chance once the Civil Guard had gotten organised. They hadn’t even been armed with plasma weapons. That would have given them a fighting chance.

  “Just like hunting birds back home,” Blake said, grimly. Jasmine heard the undertone, a restless demand for revenge, and nodded inwardly. One of their family was dead, murdered by assholes who had looted, raped and burned when they could have been building a future for their kids. People like them were what the Terran Marine Corps existed to destroy, people driven by the primitive barbarian mindset that lurked in the back of the human mind, people who had found it so much easier to take than to build. The bandits would pay for their crimes. “We keep beating; they keep running.”

  Jasmine nodded, consulting her visor as the Marines kept spreading out. The blocking force from the platoon house was in position now, ready to start shooting the bandits as they were flushed out towards it. They’d be firing with stunners at first, but if the bandits had managed to obtain body armour—even a basic protection mesh—from the Civil Guard, they’d have to switch to lethal weaponry. No one would want to wear a protection mesh in this weather—it was far too hot for wearing heavy outfits—but they wouldn’t have any choice. Professional rioters on Earth and the other Core Worlds had been known to wear them, just so they could force the Civil Guard or local police forces to use violence against the protestors. The media blew such incidents completely out of proportion.

  A flicker of light made her duck as a burst of plasma fire erupted from a shrub. She put an explosive round through the camouflaged position and smiled as her visor automatically darkened, protecting her eyes from the flare of light. Plasma cannons were notoriously unreliable at the best of times and it looked as if the Civil Guard hadn’t bothered to maintain them properly. It was galling to be grateful for incompetence, yet it had probably saved their lives.

  “I think you got him,” Blake said, dryly. The remains of the fire would have to be left to smoulder. Perhaps, when the fighting had finished, they’d have to deal with a blaze as well. Her lips twitched. Accidentally setting off a fire that raged out of control would be embarrassing and very definitely no laughing matter. She still remembered the pair of idiot male cousins back home who had tried to hold a barbeque without adult supervision and had nearly set fire to the entire compound. They’d been in disgrace for months. “We’ll have to pick up his remains with tweezers.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Faulkner growled. He designated a line in front of them on their visors. “W
e’ll hold there and let them run right into the blocking force. Keep an eye out for anyone dumb enough to think that they can get past us.

  -o0o-

  Corporal Jody Cochrane lay in the hollow and watched as the bandits ran right towards her, utterly unaware of her position … or of the other nine members of the platoon. They were clearly panicking, thinking only of getting back to the badlands and safety, rather than watching where they were going. They shouldn’t have been able to see the Marines—Jody was camouflaged behind a chameleon field—but if they had the time to take a sweep with a proper sensor, they realise that they were running right into a trap.

  “Place your stunners on wide beam,” she ordered, calmly. Half of the bandits were bare-chested, proving that they weren’t wearing any protection … or that they’d discarded it in their desperate attempt to get away from the Marines. Stunners lost their effectiveness rapidly as the range opened, but the bandits were running towards her. “Fire!”

  She triggered her own stunner, sweeping it over the oncoming wave of bandits. They were completely surprised, falling to the ground in shock, sometimes hit several times by the same stunner. It wouldn’t do them any harm in the long term, but some of them would wake up with terrible headaches. Jody couldn’t find it in her to care. She’d seen the videos of what they did to their victims. If they all had splitting headaches for the rest of their lives, which wouldn’t be very long if she had anything to say about it, it would be less than they deserved.

  Some of the bandits tried to turn back, realising that they’d suddenly run right into terrible danger, but it was far too late. Stunners didn’t work like conventional weapons; they could be played over their targets time and time again, sweeping them down like ninepins. Jody smiled inwardly as she realised they’d caught nearly seventy bandits in their little trap. They’d all have to be cuffed and marched back to the Fort, or a secure holding area nearby, but they’d never threaten the peace and security of the area again. Morgan and their other victims have been avenged.