87th Assault Marine Regt.
2nd Aerial Artillery Regt.
2nd Assault Marine Division
12th Assault Marine Regt.
87th Assault Marine Regt.
301st Void Marine Regt.
342nd Void Marine Regt.
1st Aerial Artillery Regt.
3rd Assault Marine Division
2nd Assault Marine Regt.
7th Assault Marine Regt.
8th Assault Marine Regt.
352nd Void Marine Regt.
3rd Aerial Artillery Regt.
1st Mechanized Infantry Division
1st Infantry Regt. (Human irregulars)
2nd Infantry Regt. (Human irregulars)
2nd Armored Claw (Tallerman)
3rd Armored Claw (Tallerman)
7th Armored Claw (Human/ Hardit irregulars)
II Marine Army – Sub-General Rutherford (Human)
III Marine Army – Sub-General Pree-Haccarem (Littorane)
IV Marine Army – Sub-General Byleist (Jotun)
Similar O/Bs are available for the following units:
Army Group Armored Fist – Lt. Gen Aelingir (Jotun)
Army Group Deep Strike – Lt. Gen Mountain Root (Troglodyte)
Orbital Reserve Army Group – Lt. Gen Graz (Tallerman)
— CHAPTER 28 —
The universe was on leave of absence – or at least the region around Athena that had decided to sever all links with Indiya’s reality.
Indiya had reported the situation to the Emperor, using the last dregs of material chbit polarized and then quantum entangled before being split: one part remaining in the Imperial Citadel, and the other having found its way through a tortuous route to the Legion flagship, Holy Retribution. The Emperor’s voice was the only indication that the region inside the barrier still existed in some form.
If the Hummers’ reprogramming of the Euphrates barrier generator was more than a charade, then the Legion was about to substantially alter the region inside Athena’s barrier. With no knowledge of what had happened inside the enemy’s sphere of contravallation, Indiya’s plan relied on surprise mixed with brute simplicity.
The solid red bar to the side of the main display screen in Holy Retribution’s CIC began to drain away, counting down the final seconds to the invasion.
The CIC was flooded with water, and the crew stations were not set for maximum acceleration buffering, both reflections on Indiya’s preference for the crew to have clear heads and optimal communication, rather than be ready to hightail it out of the area with bone-crushing acceleration. Being cocooned in a coffin with your mouth and lungs stuffed with buffer gel was not the best environment for fast thinking.
They were moments away now, and Indiya couldn’t help noticing the stiffness in the tails of the Littorane crew: a sure sign of tension.
She felt guilty for not offering a votive speech to the crew, invoking the spirit of the Goddess as the guarantor of their final victory against the blasphemers. But Indiya didn’t think she could pull that off. Not today. Her nerves were shot because… because this was it! The fighting would not be over, but today the war would be won.
The countdown bar drained away, and a signal was transmitted to the living barrier controller inside Euphrates.
The view of the missing region where Athena had been went haywire, forcing Indiya to look away, fearing for her sanity. When she looked back, she saw a huge moon wreathed in swirls of orange and brown clouds, and about that moon were the survivors of the New Empire fleet.
Whatever instinct had forced her to turn her head hadn’t afflicted the AIs controlling the armada of missiles that were circling the moon, waiting for the barrier to go down. Thousands of them selected the highest value local target and raced to contact.
The defenders had been caught unawares, but enough automated systems were alert to the Legion’s appearance that their warships and orbital defense platforms fired back.
The Legion sent a second signal to the controller.
The barrier reestablished itself, trapping the enemy’s fire inside.
After waiting eighty seconds for their first salvo of missiles to do their work, the barrier was lowered again, and this time the Legion fleets moved in, attacking at point blank range.
Outnumbered, and with their command and control still reeling from the unexpected hammer blow of the initial missile attack, the Imperial response was feeble and uncoordinated.
The Legion swept all before them, not ceasing in their assault until anything orbiting Athena larger than a grain of sand was destroyed, irradiated, or boarded.
As soon as she had won total control of orbit, Indiya broadcast the pre-recorded ultimatum to the doomed forces on Athena that were still besieging the Imperial Citadel.
Against Kreippil’s protests, Indiya had insisted on using her old mentor and creator, the Reserve Captain, as the herald of the Human Legion. The ancient Jotun recorded a message from the cabin in Vengeance of Saesh that she hadn’t left in years, and almost certainly never would. Speaking in the Jotun tongue, she urged the New Empire forces to surrender in return for guarantees of safety. All this, declared the Reserve Captain, was done in the name of the lawful Emperor, a political necessity Indiya was glad she didn’t have to hear in human words.
If the enemy found it less shameful to accept the ultimatum from the respected Jotun scientist, and surrendered, then the bloodshed saved would be worth any number of battles with Admiral Kreippil.
The New Empire commander responded to the peace overture without hesitation, sending over a hundred missiles up against Vengeance of Saesh.
The Legion fleet in orbit swatted away the attack with ease and readied the next phase of the invasion.
— CHAPTER 29 —
From her command post in the troopship Gallipoli, in orbit around Athena, Lieutenant-General Xin Lee considered the tactical view of the world below. She wasn’t one for empathizing with the enemy, and certainly never suffered doubts about the morality of what she did. If the defenders of the New Empire forces wanted to live, they should have accepted the Legion’s terms of surrender. And so it came to this: Operation Blowtorch. Beneath the poisonous mutagenic clouds that shrouded the moon, a toxic brew known as Flek, was a habitat that impressed even Xin in its arrogance.
With the obscuring Flek clouds stripped out from her tactical map, the view from above was like looking down upon a jungle canopy, or the islands of coral that glistened in the shallow waters of the Littorane homeworld. But the mega structure that covered Athena was artificial, and not built from the ceramalloys that were the standard construction material throughout the Empire. The world tree that covered Athena was made of burnished metal. If not for the obscuring clouds of Flek, Athena would be a gleaming jewel against the black of space. Even Athena’s oceans were crisscrossed with a network of metal walkways and habitations.
Xin’s eye settled on an island in the Southern Ocean that the human mapping team had named Australia, after a landmass on Earth of similar size. The objective of Operation Blowtorch was to seize and hold Australia. If the Legion could take a continent-sized segment of the world tree, and establish a firm foothold on the White Knight homeworld, then all doubts about the Legion’s ability to take this world would be dispelled. Surrender terms would be reissued, and they would discover just how strongly the New Empire would stand by its beliefs.
Would the soldiers of the New Empire stand and die for a principle?
Xin shook her head. That was the biggest known unknown: what had sparked the White Knight Civil War in the first place? If it was naked ambition, the defenders might be willing to give up Athena in return for safe passage. But what if they fought for political principle, or religious purity? The leaders of the New Empire might be every bit as convinced of their divine backing as the religious maniacs that were the backbone of the Littorane officer corps. If the New Empire was fighting their own holy war, the Legion would have to tear the world tree apart, trunk by trun
k, until finally the missing part of the world – the Imperial Citadel on the far side from Australia – would return to the physical universe, and they would finally have the White Knight Emperor in their power.
And if that was what it would take, then Xin wouldn’t hesitate to rip this world apart to get her armored gauntlet around that frakking Emperor, and make him answer for the Cull and all of his disgusting crimes – whatever Arun might think on that matter.
Xin softened and calmed at the thought of Arun. He was out of his recovery pod now, except when he returned for short bursts of centrifugal treatment, when the pod was spun around to put a little pseudo-gravity into his re-knitting bones. But he was a long way short of being fit for duty.
He hadn’t even fussed over her, told her to be careful, when they met last night. Arun had simply told her to get the job done, adding a feeble squeeze through his grip on her hand.
She bit her lower lip. She had rescued his shattered body from that Hardit commando ship, but as the weeks had rolled by, it was increasingly obvious that part of him had never really come back. Tears leaked from her eyes, rapidly ballooning in the zero-g until the automatic systems in her helmet activated, and rapidly wicked away these obstructions to her vision.
“We’ll get through this,” she whispered to herself. “And when our daughter is born, you’ll come back to us, whole again. I won’t let you do otherwise.”
Xin looked once more at Australia, 2000 klicks below the Gallipoli, a command vessel that tried to pass itself off as an unremarkable troopship within the huge layered clouds of Army Group Sky Strike’s orbital presence. In reality, Gallipoli had uprated armor and was surrounded by picket ships. For the first time, Xin wanted to know what was going through the minds of the defenders right now. Had they any notion that for most of them, their final day had come?
Xin clenched her fists, or as best she could within their gauntlets. She had fought alongside many brave soldiers who were themselves parents. Why couldn’t she be like them? One thought of the child within her, and her daughter’s wounded father, and her concentration was shot to pieces.
Xin instructed her AI to deliver the standard combat drug. Over the next few seconds, it felt as if the hatch was shutting on the distracting noises of life. By the time the hatch hissed shut, anything not concerned with Operation Blowtorch was reduced to cold information, of no tactical relevance, and the enemy below were vermin who deserved to die. She grinned at the thought that they were about to do just that.
Zero hour was now less than 200 seconds away. Lieutenant-General Xin Lee, commander of Army Group Sky Strike filled every remaining second of the countdown with checks on her subordinates, and of her command post systems.
Everything was ready.
The countdown reached zero, and Xin said a single word: “Go!”
——
The opening act of the invasion fell to the Heavy Support Squadron, a formation of missile destroyers that gave real punch to Army Group Sky Strike. The warships, and most of their crews, had defected from the rival Imperial navies during the war. Xin and her trusted allies had ruthlessly purged the crews of any who were unsure where their loyalties lay. They didn’t merely follow the Legion, they were loyal to her personally, to the extent that she trusted them more than ships under Indiya’s Navy echelon.
Admiral Kreippil had objected to the use of abject turncoats in such a role of honor, but Indiya had overruled, perhaps feeling the guilt of keeping the secrets of the Bonaventure for so long.
As Xin watched the missile tracks from her destroyers snake down through Athena’s atmosphere, she considered how strange it was to think of honor at a moment like this. She had promised Arun to get the job done, and she expected every single individual in her army group to do precisely that. Honor and glory were concepts the Admiral could flap his gills over, but they had no place in her command.
Anti-missile missiles streaked up from batteries concealed within the White Knight world tree, hugging the Flek clouds until the last moment to limit the effectiveness of the Legion’s beam weapons trying to knock them out from space. Enough of her missile bombardment got through to release their payload: blooms of defensive munitions that made the choking orange clouds glitter and spark with high-energy discharge.
A handful of the Legion missiles had disappeared with no explanation. Tech teams would be furiously thinking to work out why, but Xin trusted them to do their job, and enough missiles had gone through to cover the next barrage.
The Heavy Support Squadron launched another salvo under cover of the first. The attrition from the Imperial defenders was minimal, and nearly all of the salvo survived to the upper reaches of the Flek clouds, where they lit the sky in a lattice of airburst nuclear bombs. They were low-yield nukes, fission reactions rather than fusion, designed to irradiate more than destroy. The nukes were wrapped around with thermal shielding to protect their true payload: canisters of kinetic projectiles known as lazy dogs. Scattered by the bomb shockwaves, and irradiated by the dirty fission reactions, the lazy dogs dropped their diamond-tipped noses toward the Australian world tree and accelerated toward terminal velocity. This was weaponized nuclear fallout, a strike ordered by Xin to protect her armies’ descent from orbit by confusing the hell out of enemy targeting systems. But she was hoping the lazy dogs would be far more than a form of defensive munitions.
Xin waited calmly for the reports on what damage the lazy dogs had inflicted when they struck the upper canopy of the world tree at hypersonic speeds. Always, there was uncertainty in this final attack on the White Knight homeworld. If the enemy had formidable new engines of war, technologies of which the Legion had no concept, then this was where they would be encountered. Was there an equivalent to the barrier fed by Euphrates? Some new factor that would render her battle planning obsolete?
The reports came through. The lazy dogs had torn through the upper canopy of the world tree, shredding the area around Australia as if it consisted of leaves, not gleaming metal.
Already, a second salvo of lazy dog nukes was entering the upper atmosphere, but there was no time in the invasion plan for a lengthy bombardment, because no matter what devastation her forces wrought on the upper canopy, Athena’s world tree extended deep below the surface, and could easily be bolstered with defenders through underground supply routes.
She had seen enough. Xin and the other senior field commanders – Aelingir, Graz, and Mountain Root – signaled confirmation that phase 2 of the operation was to proceed.
Xin launched three of her Shock Wings, keeping two in reserve.
Meanwhile under cover of the mayhem in the skies above Australia, Army Group Deep Strike began its descent in stealth drop ships, tens of thousands of them plummeting toward the seas around Australia, where they would slow in the lower atmosphere, so they could slide over the waves, unnoticed.
In stark contrast, what the Shock Wings of Xin’s army group were about to deliver would be anything but unnoticed.
— CHAPTER 30 —
Flight-Corporal Nolog-Ndacu constantly scanned his tac-sphere for threats. 21st Scour Squadron had descended to less than a klick above the ruined upper levels of the Australia habitat. He mistrusted the poisonous orange clouds that cloaked everything on this strange world, but the radar showed the towers and walkways of the metal world tree had torn open like a forest of exploded gun barrels. Any outer defenses in the upper canopy had been wiped away by the lazy dog strike, but this was too easy.
He leaned over in his co-pilot’s seat, and thumped the pilot’s thigh three times. To many of the other species in 2nd Shock Wing, the action would appear odd, or even mutinous, but the Valiant picket aircraft of the 21st Scour Squadron were crewed by Tallermans, and for the natives of Tallerman-3 the most natural form of communication was through underground rumbles. Speech was reserved for royalty and philosophy.
Three sharp taps on the pilot’s tough hide meant a request to ease off with the frantic evasive maneuvers.
&nb
sp; Flight-Sergeant Oen-Sec complied, allowing Nolog-Ndacu a clearer view of the tactical situation.
The 21st was flying a concentric ring formation just above what passed for rooftops around here. The inner ring of nine Mark-3 Fury scour-copters was protected by an outer ring of thirty-six Valiants, who were flying a picket role, cocooning the squadron in a protective shell of defensive munitions thrown out by the aircraft AIs.
Nolog-Ndacu spotted a gap between the metal spires and instinctively distrusted this distinctive feature, aiming a barrage of flares to confuse enemy sensors, and smoke to scatter and dissipate attack by beam weapons. He reached out and used his finger to paint the suspicious area in his tac-sphere, which transmitted an update to the tac-spheres throughout 21st Squadron, adorning the region with yellow warning symbols.
This operation was taking too long. They were vulnerable here, and although the Valiant’s fuselage was stuffed full of ordnance, their supply was not infinite. Nolog-Ndacu resisted the natural impulse to draw his head down beneath the armored ring of his neck. What are we waiting for?
The answer came through a tac-sphere update, Nolog-Ndacu realized as he thumped the pilot to increase the sharpness of his maneuvering once more. Like the 21st, the rest of 2nd Shock Wing was holding position, but the other two Shock Wings deployed in the initial attack were heavily engaged against waves of aerial infantry moving to close quarters combat.
Nolog-Ndacu went rigid as rock. What the hell was aerial infantry? Athena was a huge moon, but still only a moon. They had expected aerial counter-attack to take the form of missile exchanges against unseen opponents over the horizon. Close quarters combat? Against aircraft? But that’s what the report had said.
Deploying the squadron into the atmosphere had been difficult enough, but none of the aircraft was capable of ascending to orbit without first returning to the aircraft carriers high in the upper air. Could this aerial infantry reach the aircraft carriers? That didn’t bear thinking about.
War Against the White Knights Page 19
