by B. V. Larson
We were in a small tool room, about as big as a typical two-car garage back home. Junk was everywhere, and there was a hole in the nearest wall. We used that hole to peer out and listen for approaching enemies. Around me, the Centaurs tensely watched the exits with projectors in their hands. Kwon and I were both resting against walls.
I grumbled and sat there quietly in the dark for perhaps two full minutes. I took those two minutes to think about the Centaurs and how different they were from humans. Right now, I could see another difference on display. If everything was quiet and there was a lull in the battle, human troops tended to relax as much as they could, conserving their energy for the next conflict. The Centaurs didn’t seem to operate that way. While they were in a hostile environment, they couldn’t rest. Their ears never stopped twitching. Their head swung this way and that, and they paced around, trying to sense approaching danger. I guess it all went back to our racial histories. At some point, they’d spent a lot of time being prey, while we’d become used to the lazy role of the predator.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fiddled with the radio again. I thought I heard a squawk, and the name “Major Reza”. Kwon came alive and leaned toward me when he noticed what I was doing.
“You got something there?”
“Yeah. Sounds like Reza and her team are in trouble.”
“Sure they are. They are supposed to be in trouble. When you paint your butt red and moon the bull, you expect things to become exciting.”
I chuckled. “You must have heard that from someone.”
“Yeah,” Kwon said. “A guy back at the base told me that one. He called himself a redneck, but his neck was as white as a fish belly. Puzzling.”
I chuckled again. “I can’t take it anymore,” I said. “I’ve got to head back toward the central shaft. From there, we should be able to signal someone. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a nanite stream to plug into.”
“Suit power!” Kwon said excitedly. “I’m down to seven hours of juice now.”
That wasn’t much of an excuse, I realized. This entire battle was supposed to be over in less than seven hours, and moving around wasn’t conserving power in any case. But I didn’t like the idea of a raging battle going on nearby without even being aware of how the wind was blowing. I guess it was all my own fault. As the overall commander, I could have sat outside on the hull calling shots. But I hadn’t, I’d gone into the shit, and now my boots were all dirty and I was tired of being stuck here.
We carefully picked our way through the darkened station back to the central shaft. I cautiously opened my helmet to every channel in sequence. Most of them were silent. But there was some chatter on the general command channel.
“This is Colonel Kyle Riggs,” I said, “identify yourselves.”
“Colonel Riggs? This is Major Reza. I’m pushing into the interior, sir. The enemy is falling back.”
Another voice came on then. “I thought we’d lost you, Kyle!” said Major Sloan. “I’m in the middle of an argument with Reza. She wants to advance, I’m trying to tell her to hold onto the LZ for me. Could you clarify, sir?”
“In my absence Sloan would normally be in command. However, you’re over four hours out in space, Sloan. I’ve been out of contact for over an hour myself. In this case, I would normally defer to the commander on the ground. What do you want to do and why, Reza?”
“I want to break in and follow the enemy, forcing them into a full retreat. They’re no longer trying to hold the entire battle station. I think they realize that it’s too big for their remaining forces. I want to push into that vacuum they’re leaving behind and keep the pressure on. Also, I think there may well be survivors like yourself and Welter’s troops in pockets. I want to keep them alive by giving the Lobsters something to worry about.”
I nodded to myself. “Sounds pretty good to me. Sloan, you’ll have to secure your own LZ. Just pull up some gunships and blast anything that crawls on the exterior hull. Reza, head for the central shaft. I’ll meet you there with whatever troops I can gather.”
By the time I reached the central shaft again, I’d managed to pull together the remains of five platoons. Sadly, they numbered less than a hundred troops all told. Losses had been grim, and the fighting had been universally heavy. Most of the station was in a vacuum, and my Centaur troops were wearing nanocloth balloons rather than armor. One hit, and they were usually knocked out of the game. Losses among the human marines had only been about a quarter as bad. I attributed this somewhat to their superior experience—but mostly to their armor.
When Major Reza met up with me, she’d lost less than ten percent of her men. Still, they’d definitely been bloodied. She brought a nanite stream down with her, and we powered up on it.
“What’s the plan, Colonel?” she asked me.
I could tell she was still in a hard-charging mood. This impressed me. Sloan was a cautious survivor who liked to do things by the book and take his time. This woman had fire in her, and she’d done the job I’d asked her to do and more. Still, I didn’t want a crazy person leading my men into doom. That was my job. I decided to give her a little test.
“What if I said we’re going to advance to the top of the central shaft and retake the bridge?” I asked.
She paused just a moment before saying, “I’d say that was too much to ask, sir. Especially with Sloan’s reinforcements on the way. We’d do better waiting for the additional troops before attempting that final assault.”
I nodded. It was the right answer.
“What would you do in the meantime?” I asked her.
“I’d spread out, take up defensive positions, and make sure they don’t get those generators running again.”
“Then that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Execute the plan, Major.”
She stepped away, calling for her captains. I watched her in action. Kwon came over to me.
“She’s pretty good,” he said.
“Yeah, I like her style.”
“You think she’s hot in there?”
“What?”
“In that suit. It’s pretty stuffy you know.” He began huffing again, and I realized I’d been the victim of another of Kwon’s jokes, which generally involved a weak play on words.
“That’s pretty funny, Kwon,” I lied. “Let’s set up our company on the defensive line.”
We’d retaken about half the station by now—the lower half. The generators were on the border, and the Lobsters were showing signs they meant to retake them. I realized there was still time for them to effect repairs and get the main laser batteries operating before Sloan’s reinforcements arrived. If they had a decent supply of constructive nanites, all they had to do was retake the generator rooms and pour on a generous layer of the hard-working little bastards. They knew no loyalty, and would patch up the system within an hour or two. I relayed these thoughts to Reza, who agreed immediately.
“We have to hold this line, sir,” she said, running a gauntleted finger across the tablet we were both using. Fortunately, the device was built to withstand this sort of treatment and responded with a red line slashed across the map. The line bisected the station neatly, splitting top from bottom.
We organized our troops accordingly, and our numbers swelled by three more companies before the enemy hit us. This time, they didn’t come at us via the central shaft. That would give us too great of a range advantage, as they would have to advance into our guns. Instead, they used the smaller side passages, stairways and Jefferies tubes.
“They are even coming up out of the drains, sir!” shouted Kwon, who was taking in contact reports.
“Hold positions. Kwon, let’s set up our company as series of relief platoons. If the enemy breaks through, we’ll run a fresh platoon to that spot and patch the hole.”
It was an old game plan, and we knew the drill well. It wasn’t long before our services were needed. “Breakthrough in Generator Room Two, sir!” Kwon reported.
I sign
aled a platoon and they galloped away. They were all Centaurs in this group. I frowned after them. “Let’s follow up with a full squad of humans,” I said.
“Good idea, sir,” Kwon said.
The good thing about Centaur troops was their fast feet. They made it there much sooner than we could. But they were stunned by the enemy numbers. The Lobsters kept pushing, having burned holes through the walls.
I arrived and began firing immediately. I spotted an enemy gutting a pinned Centaur. I shot a long burst, burning away all eight of its scrabbling feet. The Lobster floated away, arching and flipping. Stabbing down with its claws, it grabbed the Centaur’s neck and tried to finish the job. I put a focused beam into its head area, and it finally seized up. I advanced, but the Centaur was already dead.
Heavy fighting went on all around us. Kwon was there, beaming and backing up. Soon we stood with our backs together in the midst of the smoky generator room.
“Sir,” he said, “we need more troops.”
“No time, we have to pull back.”
We retreated as a fresh wave of enemy troops spilled into the room. We’d lost one out of three rooms.
The fighting began then at each of the generators. In each case, the results were a fierce, pitched battle. I contacted Major Reza.
“We’re in trouble down here,” I told her. “I want you send a full company to each of the three big generator rooms. We have to hold them as isolated pockets. I don’t think we have the numbers to maintain a firm line across the entire station.”
She didn’t like it, but she obeyed. With an additional company at my back, we pressed them back out at Generator Two. It was ours again.
There was a lull in the fighting. I looked around at the mess. There had to be a hundred bodies in sight, and more in every adjacent hallway and storeroom. We were lurking in a smoky haze now, shutting off our suit lights and setting up lanterns here and there to see by. Motion detectors hummed and pinged, waiting.
The next rush was worse than the first. The only generator they’d ever managed to capture was Generator Two, so maybe they thought we were the wimps. In any case, they pushed us hard. After ten minutes of sniping and crawling, I realized they’d won. We’d lost too many men, and my suit had already clamped down on my right arm, taking it off at the elbow. It didn’t feel too good, but it went numb at last when the nanites were done.
I switched my projector to my left hand and continued burning swathes into the darkness.
“We have to fall back sir,” Kwon said.
He sounded funny, and I looked for him in the darkness and dust. I found him facedown on the floor. He was breathing, but not moving. I grabbed him by an ankle, letting my projector fall and dangle by the power cord.
“Fall back!” I shouted. “Fall back toward the central shaft!”
A close circle of marines came with me. The enemy threw a shower of grenades. The survivors on our side fired and threw some back. There were flashes, booms and flares of brilliant light everywhere. I became confused, uncertain where I was or where I was going. I stuck with the group and kept dragging Kwon.
We backed up into a narrow passage. Every time the squad I was with paused to fire back at the advancing enemy, I let go of Kwon and fired with them.
We had almost reached the central shaft, when I heard a chiming in my helmet.
“Colonel? Are you there, Colonel?”
It was Major Reza. “Yes,” I said. “We’ve taken a lot of casualties and we’ve been pushed back out of Gen Room Two.”
“Roger that,” she said. “Sir, the enemy is behaving strangely. They’re pulling back here at the central shaft. Are they still attacking you?”
I leaned against a wall and checked Kwon. He was unconscious and had been in that state for some time. He was breathing, but his pulse was thready. He had several wounds, I wasn’t sure where all of them were. I wondered if he would make it.
I struggled to make sense of what Reza was saying.
“Major, they aren’t hitting us at the moment. But I’m sure they’re reorganizing for the next push.”
“No sir, I don’t think so. The reason I’m asking about your position is I think you’re in the last spot they hit. They’re quiet or retreating on all other fronts.”
I frowned into the gloom. “Send me some relief then,” I said. “We’ll hold here.”
We waited tensely in the dark. I had eighteen men and six Centaurs. The Centaurs had eyes that rolled in their visors. I didn’t blame them for being scared. They were becoming an endangered species aboard my battle station.
Finally, after what seemed like a half-century, a fresh platoon showed up. I had them take Kwon and the rest of our severely wounded to the back of the lines. I was surprised to learn that we had lines again. The enemy had inexplicably halted their attack and fallen back on every front.
Cautiously, I advanced with my new platoon into Generator Room Two again. It was empty.
Major Reza called me again. I answered, and her next words stunned me.
“Colonel? I have a new contact, sir. It’s the Lobsters—they want to talk.”
-42-
After talking to the Crustaceans for several minutes, I learned something new about them: they weren’t like the machines. They weren’t even like the Centaurs or the Worms. They were more like us humans than I’d suspected.
Their commander had carefully calculated his odds, and found them poor. He’d counted our ships, our guns and our men. He knew a relief fleet was on the way. He knew that my force of assault troops had killed a large number of his troops and taken half the battle station. He also knew that he could not hope to hold against the storm that was sure to come in the following hours.
Unlike the Centaurs with their honor, the Worms with their ferocity, or the machines with their vicious fight-to-the-last programming, the Crustacean commander didn’t want to die. He contacted me and negotiated terms. By the time Sloan and his men dropped on the exterior, we’d made arrangements to disarm and capture all the alien troops. The commander had asked that he and all his troops be allowed to return home.
I thought about it. There was a lot we could learn from keeping them as prisoners. But then again, if I hoped to weld a peace with this species in the future, keeping them indefinitely would not improve their attitudes toward me. I knew I might be able to give them up later in some sort of a prisoner exchange. But such circumstances were rare in space combat. Usually, the losing side died—all of them.
So, I gave their commander a lecture about biotic solidarity and let him go. He listened, because he didn’t have any other choice, then told me I was intellectually inferior and disconnected.
I shook my head and marveled as I pulled off my headset and lay my head back on a pile of nanocloth. I fantasized about the warm shower I planned to take when I got back aboard Actium and wondered why the Crustaceans were the way they were. I guessed they couldn’t help it. They were cantankerous, huffy intellectuals and there was probably no way to ever change that.
When they’d finally left the battle station, we found Commander Welter. He’d made his last stand with a dozen comrades in the backup-bridge. As far as we could tell, the battle had ended for him and his crewmen hours ago, while we were just entering into the station to retake it. He’d never had a hope of survival, as even if I’d known where he was, I couldn’t have fought my way down to his position in time.
Seeing Welter lying there, dead on the floor with his guts burnt out of his open suit, I felt a surge of anger. I regretted letting the Lobsters go free. It took a full minute for me to regain my composure. Just a weeks ago he and I had chased the enemy out of this battle station, but today they’d come back and gotten their revenge.
“I hereby name this structure Welter Station,” I told everyone present. I then relayed the message out over the general override channel.
I’d never given the battle station a name up until this point, partly because it was the only such structure we had. But I felt
Welter had earned the honor, and I thought it likely we would build more fortifications like this one in the future.
* * *
Three days after the liberation of the battle station, I received a message. These had been tense days, during which we watched and listened at every front. When I heard a message had come in from Kerr via the rings, I hurried to receive it. I requested a hardcopy in my quarters, and rushed down the passageway, bouncing in my haste. The low grav of the ship allowed me to take leaps as high as I felt like, but pushing off too hard with one’s feet often resulted in a knock on the head. Today, I was ducking as the ceiling came shockingly close, then pumping my next leg again to take another tremendous stride.
I pulled the message out of the tray in my quarters, and already I was frowning. It was only a single page.
We whooped ‘em, Riggs! We took them all, you cagey bastard. I’m sure you thought the Empire would fall, that we couldn’t stand up against a Macro fleet without the amazing Kyle Riggs at the helm. Well, you were wrong, boy!
Sure, we’ve got a few bruises. Who needed Pakistan or Italy, anyway? The fallout over India was the worst, but we’re still here! There were plenty of provinces they never touched.
And in case you’re considering finishing up what the Macros started with a follow-up attack, I want you to know you won’t get through, either. We’re ready, and we’re still on our feet. Go ahead and give it your best shot.
-General Kerr, Imperial Forces, April 11th
I read the message twice. I put it down, paced around the cabin, then read it again. I shook my head. I hadn’t wanted Earth to be hurt. I’d taken a terrible gamble, I realized that now. I should never have let the machine fleet through intact. On the other hand, I knew if I’d chosen to fight the Macros toe-to-toe out here on the frontier, I probably would have lost.
As a human, I owed it to the rest of humanity to defend them against the Macros. Maybe I could have stopped that armada entirely. At the very least, I could have weakened it and saved lives. Possibly millions of lives.
