Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade

by Mason Elliott

  Bot parents lay bleeding from multiple wounds.

  Naero passed out trying to use her biomancy to sustain them both and keep them alive.

  Spacer Marines must have pulled them all out afterwards.

  Naero awoke briefly, next to Mama Kincaid, while the medics worked on all the wounded. Nelena reached over and took Naero’s hand.

  “Thank you, Naero,” Mama Kincaid told her with a trembling smile. “Thank you for saving us…our star girl.”

  Again, Naero gave her all of the lifeforce energy that she could spare, before blacking out once more.

  Yet when Naero came to later, Om informed her that only Papa had survived his serious wounds. Mama was gone.

  Naero remained on Yoder-3 for Mama Kincaid’s funeral the next day. The farm people did not return to the stars the way the star people did. As landers, and as farm people, they returned to the earth they loved so well.

  Overall, the barrier had held up. The invaders had only managed to penetrate the planetary defense shield by accident and attack the locals in that one location. The Alliance even did what it could to further bolster the shield protecting Yoder -3.

  Yet without Naero being there onworld, it still could have proven disastrous.

  As things stood, only one Yoderian had perished, and that in itself was considered by many to be a fortunate miracle. Perhaps they were right. So many other worlds had suffered so much greater death and destruction, that by the numbers, one death sounded almost trivial by comparison.

  Yet that one single loss deeply touched the lives of so many on a world that only knew peace. Although few might understand that.

  While the Alliance Navy spent a few days securing the nearby systems, Naero obtained permission to spend her recovery time with her shattered farm world family, helping them to begin to recover.

  Thereafter, when the star girl returned to her star people, in honor of Mama Kincaid and all who had been lost during that terrible war thus far, Naero sent for her friend Shalaen of the Yattai–a true angel of light if there ever was one. And the greatest and most powerful healer that Naero had ever witnessed.

  The Alliance had great need of Shalaen’s unique gifts.

  They met on one of the hospital ships in a small, well-lit, but sterile-smelling conference room.

  The two friends embraced and caught up for a few minutes, then Naero took Shalaen by the hands. “I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t have much time. I have to get back to my Marines. I have spoken with Intel, General Walker, and even your father. I have summoned you here to perform a great task.”

  Shalaen smiled, glowing with the same serene blue light which she always did. “For you, N? Anything. Tell me what it is that I must do?”

  “Follow me, my sister.”

  Naero led Shalaen down corridors and into a huge recovery room that took up an entire deck of the hospital ship, filled with medbeds and with the lighting subdued. The large chamber had a few medtek attendants posted at desks.

  “Who are all of these wounded?” Shalaen asked.

  “Casualties of the war,” Naero said. “All head wounds. Their bodies have been healed; those we can regenerate. But the brain and the mind is beyond even the limits of our science at this time. Can you try to help them, Shalaen? We have their neural net mindscans and all of their bioscans and medical records. You can access each one through our systems very easily.”

  Shalaen looked at them all. Then she walked over to the nearest medbed, with a young female Marine with short brown hair. Shalaen linked with the medical systems.

  Naero checked the Marine’s name: Gemma Lewis, from a sept of Clan Wilde.

  Shalaen continued her analysis. “Shrapnel damaged and tore out most of the left side of her brain, causing extensive injury and loss of function.”

  “Do you think you can do anything for her?”

  “Let me try. Like this?” Shalaen placed her hands on both sides of the near-brain dead young Marine.

  Blinding white light flared through Gemma Lewis’s skull as if it were lit from within by a great force.

  As the light faded, a few instants later, Gemma blinked and looked up at them, gasping and confused.

  “Where am I? How did I get here? The last thing I remembered… I was fighting beside my mates on Alparona-3. We got stomped on by an enemy arty barrage.”

  The medteks came running to take over.

  Naero threw her arms around her amazing sister and friend.

  “It won’t work on every case,” Shalaen cautioned. “The neural-net scans are all just snapshots, really. There will probably still be significant loss of memory in many cases, even if I can regenerate and re-awaken the living brain tissues.”

  Naero pulled away grinning. “It’s still better than what we have. At least we’ll be able to send some part of them back to their families and Clans. Thank you again, Shalaen.”

  “How many such cases are out there, Naero?”

  “Several thousand, unfortunately. It might take you quite a while to work you way through them all, on all of the various wards they’re on.”

  Shalaen sighed. “Well then, I’d better get busy. Nice seeing you again, Naero. I know you have to get back to your unit as you said. When the war is over, we need to see each other more often.”

  Naero grinned her characteristic half-smile. “I can arrange that.”

  Shalaen went right to the next head wound case and began studying all of the data and records. One of the medteks came up to Naero, completely flabbergasted.

  “Sir? What if I may ask, is that glowing young woman doing with our patients? Orders came down telling us to grant you and her full access, but we never expected anything like this. That patient over there has a complete working brain again. How is that possible? Haisha! What the hell is going on here?”

  Naero took the rattled young medtek by the arm. “Relax. But I would alert your superiors and get lots of help down here, if I were you. I think you’re about to become extremely busy.

  30

  The final battle of the High Crusade for Company 36 took place on Viden-4, in the heart of the largest gigacity on the planet.

  Naero had had enough.

  Before they dropped down, she went to Whip Konrad that day and jerked him to his feet. “For once, you muttering bastard, will you just shut the fuck up! I’m so sick of your crazy shit. Haisha! You won’t have to worry about the enemy killing your dumb ass. I will do it myself!”

  No one said another word after that, including Whip.

  They all finished prepping for what was going to be their final drop.

  Shetanna and her Marines had the unenviable task of assaulting more than a thousand Ejjai shock troops, holding out near one of the last meatships to be located and blown up. It burned nearby, almost utterly destroyed, just as it should be.

  The last, putrid nest of the invaders barricaded themselves inside a fortified school adjacent to the area, which had at that time been used by the civies as a refugee camp and aid station for non-combatants, most of them young children.

  As usual, the invaders now had the whole place rigged with explosives and shielded against mass stunners. They even strapped explosives and mines to themselves, some with kill switches. If they died, the bombs still went off.

  Apparently, the way the enemy saw it, they had plenty of food and could die fat and happy, whenever the time came. They had nothing to lose. They knew they were going to go down eventually.

  In true Ejjai fashion, the invaders wanted to go out with a bang and take as many people as they could with them when they did.

  Shetanna and Bravo Command had a very different endgame in mind. And by that time, everyone was so sick of the war that they all wanted to end things and wrap them up tight, ASAP.

  That same night, Shetanna slipped in and out, fully cloaked, with a cloud of Intel microfixers. Together, they swept the school and neutralized as many of the explosives as they could, over ninety-seven percent of them.

  The micr
ofixers were so good at what they did, in fact, that the slashers thought all of their ordnance was still live and working properly.

  They wouldn’t learn the truth until they tried to set the devices off.

  Then, back on the outside, Naero and Om helped pweak their unit tactical CPA to first neutralize as many of the Ejjai as possible, who still had active explosives, and defeat the deadman kill switches at the same time. The timing of the coordinated attacks was key to the overall success of the attack plan.

  Otherwise, the attempt was still going to result in lots of dead kids.

  36 led nine other companies, poised to attack the invaders almost one on one. Some with microexplosives, some with direct fire, and some with blades, right up close.

  The combat grid plotted it all out. Shetanna and each Marine all had three priority targets, just to make sure that all of the Ejjai went down hard and lightning fast.

  Then the fixers they left behind emitted several warnings. The enemy was moving around and doing something. Shetanna slipped back in like a wraith, flying along the ceiling with her fixers, sometimes upside down.

  In the lower levels of the high rise megaschool, thousands more Ejjai were pouring in from hidden tunnels.

  Wherever those new forces were coming from, they would need to be hunted down, surrounded, and eliminated at the same time. Bravo scrambled to shoot in other units to compensate.

  The basic attack plan was delayed while the adjustments were made.

  But they couldn’t wait too long, or the enemy reinforcements would filter up into the higher levels where the kids were.

  Finally. Green to go in five. Mark.

  Bravo ghosted their way in through the darkness, getting into position, many of them hovering silently up in the air above their targets. It would be necessary for many of the Marines to shield the hostages with their own armored bodies.

  Bloody piles of bones and shattered skulls in the corners already testified to the grisly hunger of the enemy.

  The bitches had had their last meal. Their horror ended. Tonight.

  At three bells, Shetanna signaled the attack.

  The whumpf! of Marine explosives and pulses of direct fire shook and rattled the mega structure from below. Glass and plasteel shattered or burst.

  The bulk of the final battle lasted only seconds as the Marines cut down the invaders. The Ejjai perished not like warriors, but like animals. Little fire was returned, their deaths were so swift.

  One small pocket of enemy resistance held out on one of the upper floors of the school overlooking the grounds. A last band of Ejjai had a bunch of stunned kids stacked up there like pallets.

  Both Chime Fox and Peter Cooper were up there as part of the assault. Chime called for help.

  “N, Jonny, get some teams up here! Our unit shields are holding but we’ve got two dozen slashers using a bunch of knocked out kids for cover and shields, and there are even a couple of those big mutant bitches!”

  36 got the call and raced up there, surrounding the area, but only Naero and perhaps a few squads could go in.

  First they went in cloaked.

  Chime and Pete and the other two squads present were behind their unit shield, holding their fire.

  Some of the enemy were firing back at them to no avail, while most of the Ejjai were busy hastily rigging something behind cover and out of sight. The stacked up piles of kids made it hard to do anything or get in close.

  N, they’re rigging a bunch of fusion bombs back there.

  Om, send the fixers in to neutralize those charges.

  Then the Ejjai flung grenades at the Marine shield.

  As the unit shield disrupted, all bets were off. Chaos quickly took over.

  Naero took on one of the three Ejjai sterodan mutants, carving off its heads.

  But the thing was also covered in bandoliers of activated fusion bombs set to go off.

  There was no way to neutralize all of those devices at once.

  The entire upper level was about to be vaporized, and everyone near it. Such a blast could take out the entire upper section.

  And there were two more mutants just as stacked up with bombs as this one.

  Naero drove into the first one she faced, kicking and smashing into the creature, until she finally drove it through the wall and sent it plummeting down into a deep crater already next to the school.

  Om warned the other Marines away. The rest of 36 scattered.

  Naero transported the second mutant high up into the sky. Transporting others, especially a creature that size and mass was very tough.

  She dropped to her knees, gasping and nearly spent from the effort.

  No time or juice left to take out the third one.

  By then the other Marines with her had slain the other Ejjai and fought with the last remaining mutant.

  Not one of them turned and ran.

  The mutant batted some of them away with its great strength.

  But the Marines ignored it and tried to duck and dodge around it up close. They did their best using energy blades and knives to slice through the various fusion bombs strapped to the monster.

  They disabled most of them.

  But they simply didn’t have time to neutralize them all.

  The first two mutants exploded down below and above, rocking the entire block.

  One Marine charged in without hesitation and smashed into the last mutant, activating another unit shield pod around them both as they toppled out of the shattered wall, still thrashing and fighting each other.

  Even as they fell, the Marine unloaded a grenade pistol into the mutant’s face and tried to kick off.

  But just as they went out of sight the next instant, several of the remaining fusion bombs the monster carried went off.

  The last Marines present had set their personal shields in anticipation of those coming blasts, and did their best to fling themselves and their armored bodies over the piles of helpless children.

  Even a unit shield pod could not hold back the destructive power of so many multiple detonations.

  With the last of her strength, Naero attempted to help shield them all from the explosions that rocked the upper level from the outside.

  The blasts blew out most of the walls and peeled back the roof of the upper levels, until only the metal frame of the building’s upper portion and most of the floor remained intact.

  Things could have gone far worse.

  But Naero knew for a fact that they had at least one KIA. The other Marines were battered and beat up, but alive. They checked the kids as help poured in. Only three of the kids had perished. Another miracle considering all that had happened.

  Clearly, that one Marine had had saved them all. If those fusion bombs had all gone off any closer, everyone up there would have perished.

  Naero sighed and looked around in sudden panic. Where was Chime? Where was Pete? She didn’t spot them right away with everyone packed in all around her.

  “All right. Who is it?” she called out over their link in the aftermath, dust settled down. “Who did we lose? Who’s our hero that took that big mutant out and saved the rest of us up here?”

  Sarah Maeris, Naero’s very distant cousin, sobbed openly. “It’s…it’s Jonny, N.”

  Naero sucked in a painful breath.

  Someone had just cut her legs out from under her.

  She screamed, her voice shaking as she completely lost it.

  “No! No… not Jonny. Haisha! Why him? Fuck the enemy, and fuck this bloody, goddam war!” Naero shrieked like a tortured animal.

  Sarah continued to mourn, confirming what they already knew. “They’ve killed Jonny Fox, everyone. Cut him in half and blasted him to pieces. He’s gone from us.”

  Naero broke down and sobbed, rocking back and forth with her face buried in her hands.

  Jonny, her good friend. Little brother Fox, the quiet able Marine who didn’t like to kill things, who just wanted his own ship like any good Spacer did. All Jonny wanted was
to go home to his nutty greatgran, and find some cute gal–someone to love him, and maybe have two or four kids, some day, an even number, to continue the family name.

  A day that would never come, now.

  Jonny Fox was the last of them.

  The last Spacer Marine to die during combat ops of the High Crusade to save all of humanity.

  He went out a hero, fighting to the very end. But he was still gone, and he was never coming back.

  Naero would see her brother decorated for all his bravery and gallantry and sent forth on the next journey like all good Spacers.

  But that would never make up for any of their losses, now or in the past. Nothing ever could.

  Once the hostages were secure and the landers took over, the Marines ignored the many thanks being issued and only wished to leave and get away.

  They packed up and saw to their own dead, as they always did. They scooped up and collected as much of valiant Jonny Fox as they could find. They even washed away his blood. The Spacer Marines put his remains and his weapons across his shattered armor and body within a standard casualty bag. Trevor Lakota came by and placed one of his precious knives inside with Jonny. Then the Marines put the broken, defeated weapons of their vanquished foes at Jonny’s feet, including the main Ejjai general’s sword, which Naero obtained and snapped in half herself, with her own bare hands.

  They opened his battered face shield and washed Jonny’s face. At least they could still see his poor face.

  The growing crowd parted. Chime was carried to his side, inconsolable. She closed his staring green eyes with her shaking fingertips, and then kissed each of them once they were closed. In the end, she had to be pulled off the body of her cousin so that they could prepare to take him away.

  Pete held her in his strong arms while she convulsed and shook. He kept her from collapsing to the ground in a heap; Chime was like a ragdoll.

  Many of Jonny Fox’s comrades and mates knelt and kissed that handsome, boyish face, and many held Jonny’s one remaining cold hand and said their goodbyes to their battle brother.

  Chime, Naero, and Pete rode up with him in the cargo hold and they all held each other during the ride without speaking. All of the heroes of Bravo Command Marine Company 36 went with them when they arrived.