Tree of Liberty

by Wayne Basta

The coming battle was going to be the greatest challenge they had faced yet, outside of the disastrous encounter over Sulas that had cost them most of the fleet. Without the Black Market, this mission would be suicide. With it, it still might be.

  “Dropping out of hyperspace in one minute,” Tadashio announced from Ops.

  Saracasi stood up and stretched her shoulders. Realistically, she could run the entire battle while remaining sitting, but it felt wrong somehow to do so. So she stood before the tactical display, waiting tensely for them to exit hyperspace and learn what they would be facing.

  From the front of the bridge, she shared a look with Jerik and gave him a nod. She still doubted she would have ever liked the former bounty hunter in a social setting but had developed a respect for his abilities as a pilot and commander. He was harsher and more dismissive of lower-ranked crew than she liked, but he got the job done.

  The timer for hyperspace reversion hit zero, and she took a deep breath, letting the nausea of reversion wash over her. She watched the tactical display slowly come to life as the ship’s sensors scanned the system. Jerik ordered an immediate launch of their fighters.

  The Black Market did the same, launching the gunship squadron, all the remaining fighters they had retrieved from Kol, and those freelance pilots the Fox had convinced to fly for him. It was a far cry from the number of craft the ship was capable of launching, but it was more than they had had in any other battle.

  Studying the tactical display, Saracasi frowned. “Chief Tadashio, confirm that sensor telemetry is being transmitted to the tactical display.”

  The Kowwok operations chief responded a moment later. “Confirmed—all data is being relayed. No enemy contacts are on sensors.”

  A bad feeling came to Saracasi. The last time they had sent in a scout ship, the Alliance’s entire marine expeditionary force—a strong force—had been in orbit. While it was possible that the fleet had bunched together on the opposite side of Enro from them, it would be unusual.

  “Wildcard Squadron, get a scan of Enro’s dark side. All other ships, hold formation outside the planet’s gravity well. Keep hyperdrives on active standby,” Saracasi ordered over the fleet comm.

  Assuming the Alliance wasn’t laying out an elaborate trap for them, like had occurred over Sulas, where had the MEF gone? Data from scans of the surface of Enro were starting to come in, and Alliance ground forces still appeared to be in control of the planet. Some of the fleet might have landed and would be difficult to detect, but the MEF’s command carrier and cruiser weren’t designed to land on a planet’s surface.

  Several tense minutes went by while the squadron made a full burn to orbit the planet. One flight took up a position near the terminus so it could relay communications from the other ships and the fleet. Shortly after they lost sensor contact on the main flights, data came in.

  “No sign of Alliance ships in orbit,” the squadron leader reported.

  Saracasi frowned. They had apparently found Enro completely unprotected by Alliance forces. That meant one of two things: either the Alliance was once again laying a trap for her fleet, or the MEF had gone somewhere else to cause trouble.

  “Can you estimate how many of their forces are still on the surface?” Saracasi asked.

  Tadashio responded, “I’m reading several dozen active shield barriers and signs of vehicle activity at each one. It’s impossible to gauge specific troop numbers, but based on quantity of resources, it would equate to approximately eight to ten divisions.”

  From what she had been briefed on, an Alliance MEF consisted of four or five corps or about twenty divisions. She knew that some of the marine forces had been deployed to Sulas to bolster the forces there. If almost half were still on Enro, then wherever the fleet had gone, it hadn’t taken many marines.

  “All ships, move into a high orbital position over Perth. Target the Alliance military positions near the city,” Saracasi ordered.

  “Commodore,” Davidus said to her after requesting a private channel, “that will put us inside the gravity well.”

  “I know, Dav,” Saracasi said. “But if this is a trap, we can’t sit here doing nothing waiting for them to spring it. We’re going to start firing on those troops. Either there’s no trap, in which case we can help the Enro defenders, or there is, and we’ll still be in a high orbit.”

  “None of our ships are designed for planetary bombardment. It will take a while to penetrate their defensive shields,” Davidus said.

  Saracasi let out a small chuckle. “Well, either we’re walking into an ambush, in which case it doesn’t matter, or the fleet really is gone, in which case we have all the time we need.”

  Davidus didn’t state the obvious: wherever the fleet had gone was where they should go as soon as possible. The Alliance could be staging another, stronger, attack on Irod or might have learned that the Audacious was no longer defending Kol. Unfortunately, they had no way of knowing, and flying around blindly wouldn’t do them any good.

  “We’ve achieved our orbital position,” Ceno said from the helm.

  “All ships, commence firing,” Saracasi ordered.

  Every ship in the fleet with powerful enough blaster cannons began firing them down toward the surface of Enro. She could imagine the fiery display as they all converged against the Alliance’s protective shield over their troops. For anyone below the shield, it would be a beautiful cascade of colors and a terrifying visage of doom.

  The bombardment continued for several minutes before Tadashio gave her a report. “Commodore, I’ve made contact with the Enro defense force. They’re requesting our assistance against a priority target.”

  That was good, Saracasi thought. She had feared that the Enro troops had all been wiped out by now. They must have been putting up a hell of a fight to still have a command structure in place after months of fighting hardened Alliance marines and an orbital fleet with no outside support.

  “What do they need, Chief?” Saracasi asked.

  “They say they’ve been targeting supplies held at the main Alliance camp outside Perth. A supply convoy is en route with replacements, including fuel. If we can take out the convoy, they might not be able to keep their shield up for very long on the fuel they have,” Tadashio relayed.

  “Do they have a location on the convoy?” Saracasi asked.

  Spotting something on a surface from orbit could be easy, if you had some idea where to look, but planets were big, and trying to find a few vehicles on a great swath of land could take significant time, even knowing where the convoy was headed.

  “Yes, ma’am. Beginning a scan of the general region they’ve identified,” Tadashio answered.

  Saracasi’s holographic map of Enro’s surface changed, zooming out and away from the Perth base by several dozen kilometers to a small suburban area outside the main city. Several seconds went by as Tadashio used the sensors to scan all the objects, identifying houses and vehicles.

  Mixed in among the homes was a collection of objects tagged red for hostile targets. Saracasi picked out a convoy of about two dozen Alliance trucks and SPCs. The SPCs would potentially be tough targets, since they were shielded and maneuverable. The trucks wouldn’t be hard to destroy.

  The vehicles were all currently stopped. Their proximity to a large collection of homes gave Saracasi pause. Her fleet’s weapons fire could be fairly accurate, but not accurate enough to avoid endangering those homes.

  “Chief,” Saracasi asked, “ask the Enro forces if they know if there are still civilians in the homes where the Alliance convoy is parked.”

  A moment later, Tadashio came back. “They report that the homes should be clear. They ordered the neighborhood evacuated months ago.”

  Saracasi frowned. “Should be clear” wasn’t definite. She switched her display back to the Alliance camp. Her data showed that the Alliance shield hadn’t weakened significantly. Taking it down would take a fair amount of time via a traditional bombardment. Having the shield fail from lack o
f fuel would greatly speed up the process.

  Making her decision, she transmitted the coordinates of the troop convoy to the fleet. “All ships, shift targets to this convoy. They’re carrying critical supplies to the Alliance camp. Saturation bombardment.”

  A saturation bombardment would make it much harder for the vehicles to dodge incoming fire, since it would be everywhere. Many civilian homes would be destroyed this way, but that was an inevitable side effect of an orbital bombardment. Her job wasn’t to protect property. It was to win the war.

  As the bombardment began, Saracasi thought back to her first battle, here on Enro, right outside Perth. At the time, she had never killed anyone. She had operated the gun turret aboard Cutty Sark, and the very idea of shooting at and killing Alliance vehicles full of troops had made her feel sick. Now, almost a year and a half later, she was ordering an orbital bombardment against several dozen vehicles located in a civilian population center, and she felt no hesitation. Even knowing that there might be civilian deaths as a result didn’t sway her decision. The odds were low, and stopping the Alliance’s ability to fight would save more civilian lives than the handful who might have refused to leave their homes.

  The bombardment continued for several minutes. A few of the SPCs made a break for safety, some managing to make it out of the primary fire zone. But the terrain was flat and they had nowhere to hide, so even those lucky few didn’t last long.

  Once all the Alliance vehicles were confirmed destroyed, Saracasi shifted the fleet’s fire back to the main camp. Now they just had to wait out the Alliance’s fuel supply. A sustained bombardment was a drain on ship power systems, but they should be able to keep it going longer than the Alliance.

  While the bombardment continued, Saracasi redeployed the cutters to a wide orbit around Enro. She wanted a wider sensor net watching for an Alliance counter–attack, and the cutters were useless for planetary bombardment. She also pulled the gunships and Gallant.

  “Major Relis,” Saracasi said over the comm, “dispatch your gunships to Sulas, Cardine, Kol, Dantyne, and Irod. Have them do a quick check to see if our missing MEF is there and then get back here.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Fracsid replied. “What if the fleet isn’t there?”

  It was a twelve-day round trip from Irod to Enro, even with the speed of the gunships. A lot could happen in that timeframe. “If we need to bug out, we’ll meet at emergency jump point beta. If we go anywhere important, we’ll have the EDF let you know.”

  With everything taken care of that she could, Saracasi sat back down. She would just have to wait out the Alliance shield.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It took more than a week to move enough troops close enough to Chuthor to begin the assault. During that time, Zeric quietly fretted that the Alliance would catch them. Moving thousands of troops covertly was not an easy task.

  Fortunately, there hadn’t been any sign of detection so far. The biggest risk that they still faced was that the Alliance had reinforced their base in the intervening time. All the intelligence they had gathered indicated that the base had been stripped to a bare minimum number of troops. They’d obtained reports showing the base commander had requested more troops on several occasions. It would be just their luck that his wish had been granted while Zeric moved people into place.

  When the night of the planned attack came, none of Zeric’s scouts had seen any sign of reinforcements arriving at the base. That, combined with the news that the Alliance fleet in orbit had indeed departed for parts unknown, gave him an uneasy feeling of hope. Maybe things would work out the way he planned for once.

  At 0100, Zeric gave the signal and his troops began the attack. Using one of the oldest tactics in history, Zeric and a team of Rogues climbed aboard stolen Alliance trucks. Dressed in Alliance uniforms, they drove toward the base. Behind them, the main body of his attack force followed, firing wildly toward Zeric’s trucks.

  Once they came into sight of the base, Zeric directed Kumus to start transmitting a distress call. Behind them, his troops kept firing. Once they got within a hundred meters of the base, the rearmost truck exploded. That bit of theater had been Ymp’s suggestion. Seeing the fireball behind him, Zeric agreed that it really did add to the realism—almost too much.

  The driver of Zeric’s truck accelerated as they turned onto the straightaway leading to the Alliance base. Confused shouting was still coming in over the comm, but Kumus yelled back in a convincingly hysterical manner. Almost at the last second, the guards at the gate opened it and cleared the way for Zeric’s trucks to race into the base.

  After Zeric’s trucks rolled inside, a line of SPCs lifted off and headed back out the gate. He hoped Ymp wouldn’t take the attack feint too seriously and would back off from them. She had some heavy weaponry to deal with SPCs, but until Zeric could do his job, her force would be vulnerable.

  Turning back to the troops in the cargo area, Zeric said, “Everyone ready?”

  He got several nods from grimly determined faces. Among them was Sienn’lyn. Once the fleet had departed, he had tried to convince her to leave Sulas with Cutty Sark and return to the Union fleet, but for some reason, she had refused.

  Zeric checked his rifle and then gave the signal. The Rogues leapt from the truck and began running across the base. He followed them out as the team headed toward the base’s shield generator control room. Around them, chaos erupted as troops spilled from the other three vehicles.

  It didn’t take long for the Alliance to realize their mistake. Troops manning the wall defenses rotated them inward and started blasting the ground around Zeric’s troops. Screams of pain sounded out and bodies dropped all around him. He pushed himself harder, moving to the front of his squad’s line.

  Despite being in the middle of a war, it had now been months since Zeric had been in a firefight. Even when the Alliance had attacked Irod, he hadn’t picked up a gun or had blaster fire come anywhere near him. He suddenly felt more alive than he had since he had left Sulas.

  With a surge of adrenaline, Zeric pushed himself even faster, lifting his rifle to make wild shots toward any group of Alliance soldiers he saw. He doubted he’d hit anything, but even wild fire might prevent them from hitting him. Tearing through the open space, he was the first to reach the shield generator building.

  A handful of others made it to the building’s wall and pressed themselves close against it. Before the entire team had made it, a repeating blaster emplacement above them activated and started blasting away at the rest of the squad. Four marines dropped within seconds. The rest scattered, one or two more making it to the wall and below the gun’s firing angle, the rest backtracking toward the next closest building. Three more from the squad were gunned down before everyone made it to some kind of safety.

  Inwardly, Zeric fumed. His plan of a surprise attack had been based on being able to get inside the Alliance base and reach critical points before defensive emplacements could be fully manned. He had already lost seven from his squad of twenty, and they still had to get inside.

  Forcing himself to put the dead marines out of his mind, Zeric pushed forward. While the defensive gun above them could not target them here, the Alliance troops guarding the installation knew where they were. He had to get to them before they got to him.

  Hugging the wall of the building, Zeric’s squad ran around to the nearest corner. Just around the bend, they found an emergency door. It was the type that had no outside handle or means of opening the door, intended merely as a way out in case of fire or other disaster, but anything that could let people out could let them in.

  Placing explosives around the edges of the door frame, Zeric backed the squad around the corner. Once they were clear, he triggered the explosives. A loud thunder sounded, and he could feel the shockwave vibrate along the exterior of the building. Counting to three after the explosion, Zeric gestured his squad forward.

  They ran back around the corner and into the cloud of debris and dust
that now filled the air. Rushing into the cloud, they ran through the former doorway and into the building. Blaster fire greeted them, but the dust served to obscure them from Alliance fire. By the time Zeric made it through, his marines had cleared the first room.

  Not wasting time checking every room or leaving a rear guard to protect their flank, Zeric ran forward. They had nowhere near enough forces to hold the base. His team’s job was to get in, cause chaos, and shut down the shield and defensive guns. Once that happened, Ymp’s forces could safely advance and take the base. But that required speed, not caution.

  They exchanged sporadic fire with a few Alliance soldiers in the building but didn’t stop to ensure they got them. Their speed proved advantageous, as by the time Zeric reached the main control room, the defenders were still setting up their position. Tossing grenades ahead of them, his squad paused only long enough for the grenades to detonate before advancing on the soldiers.

  They had moved in too close for rifles, so the final confrontation with the control room guards turned into a melee. Zeric swung his rifle like a club to bash one soldier and then raised it a second later to block a rifle being swung at his head. Holding the two rifles locked together, he shoved the soldier back, then let go of his rifle, unbalancing the soldier. In that brief second, he drew a combat knife from his belt and slashed it forward.

  The knife penetrated the soldier’s chest armor, a light mesh energy-absorbing cover. The man’s eyes bulged as he collapsed, and Zeric felt sick. He hated it when combat got this close and personal.

  Beside him, the rest of his squad had engaged the soldiers. It had been in situations like this that Gu’od had shone. He caught sight of Sienn’lyn dropping several soldiers for every one the others did. Her movements weren’t as fluid and graceful as Gu’od’s, but she still knew her stuff.

  The melee lasted only a handful of seconds, even though it felt longer. Two of Zeric’s squad were severely injured, but everyone had some kind of cut or bruise. He would have to see to the wounds later. Taking a quick survey of the downed Alliance troops, he spotted an officer and used his key card to open the door to the control room.