The Temple of Light (The Shadow Space Chronicles Book 5)

by Kal Spriggs

  Chapter XVIII

  Gorgon Colony, Kapteyn's Star

  Centauri Confederation

  March 5, 2410

  Sidewinder's fleet advanced. He recognized the ships of the United Colonies. His scouts had reported that the human Leone had landed troops on the planet. His orders were clear, however. The transmission showed that the human, Reese, had landed on the planet and that the other target would soon land. The Temple's defenses would prevent any general bombardment, so his forces would establish a perimeter and destroy any human ships that attempted to lift off... and any human ships that forced the perimeter.

  The humans have used missiles in waves before, he sent out to his ships, selective fire, sequenced as rehearsed, do not allow them to use their range to their advantage.

  With the size of his force, he had all the advantage he needed. The humans on the planet would not escape.

  ***

  "Oh, shit," Lieutenant Commander Forrest Perkins said as the sleek, fast vessels swept in fast. "Are we being targeted?"

  "Negative, sir," Petty Officer Godbey said, his voice equally soft. "I don't think they see us."

  "That's... interesting," Forrest murmured. If the ship's defense screen worked against these enemies, then that meant they'd found a potential weakness... one they could exploit.

  Forrest watched as the alien ships opened up on some of the nearest ships. They didn't seem to discriminate between Shogunate, United Colonies, CRAN, or even Centauri Confederation ships. They fired on any ship in range and they continued to fire until their targets withdrew. Forrest watched as the battle moved away, ships exchanging fire in a chaotic, multi-way fight.

  He didn't want to think about the human cost to this fight. Admiral Collae seemed to be holding his own, but several of the Shogunate destroyers were smashed apart before they could even begin to withdraw.

  "Message Captain Beeson," Forrest said, "Ask him for permission to engage."

  From their position, the Widowmaker could hit the new enemy from inside their defensive perimeter. The attack might be enough to throw them into a panic or at least sow enough confusion to force them to withdraw.

  Of course, their destruction would be virtually guaranteed. The Widowmaker lay in range of dozens of the enemy ships. As soon as they opened fire they'd be targeted by all of those vessels.

  "He says to hold our fire, sir," Petty Officer Godbey said after a tense moment.

  Forrest bit his lip. He watched grimly as ships and personnel continued to die. He just hoped that whatever this fight was about was worth the cost.

  ***

  Alannis crouched as a chain of detonations blasted smoke and debris down the corridor.

  Colonel Wachope kept to his feet and he turned and fired off-hand even as he called out, "First Company, push them on the left flank. Second Company, continue to engage at the center."

  The local, a young man who couldn't have been more than fifteen, dropped as the Battalion Commander cut him down with the off-hand burst. The grenade he'd been about to throw rolled back into his hiding spot and detonated in an eye-searing flash. Tanis Works P-11 plasma grenade, Alannis thought, deadly to unarmored personnel and extremely dangerous even to powered armor. The grenades had an effective blast radius of thirty meters and could cause thermal burns out to a hundred. The boy who'd been about to throw it would have been inside of the lethal range of the weapon.

  From what Alannis had seen so far, such suicide tactics were common by the locals. On landing, they'd lost a half-dozen Marines as women and children, armed with improvised explosives, had charged the perimeter.

  They'd pushed on since then, the Marines having a massive tactical advantage in their powered armor. Yet they had strategic disadvantage. The longer the battle went on, the more they drained their suits. The antimatter reactors of the suits would only last so long.

  "Sir," Lieutenant Lizmadie Doko spoke over the net, "Major Woods is down."

  Alannis winced. Second Company had taken the brunt of the casualties as they moved forward. With Major Woods down, Lizmadie was now the ranking officer in the company.

  "Roger," Colonel Wachope replied. "You've got command. Keep them fixed in the center while First Company works their flank."

  "Yes, sir!" Lizmadie snapped back.

  Alannis hoped that her friend pulled through this, yet as another wave of screaming locals came rushing from a side corridor, she focused on staying alive.

  ***

  Commander Matthew Copley smiled as one the alien corvettes vanished in a ball of fire. “Keep pouring the fire on them!” He snapped out to his tactical officer.

  Part of him rejoiced at the close-range, desperate fight. Matthew rationally knew that he had nothing to prove, that no one held his cousin’s… life choices against him, but all the same, he relished the chance to fight the Gallant the to the fullest extent of its abilities.

  “Enemy vessels closing on course three two seven,” his sensor officer barked out.

  “Roll ship thirty degrees to port, adjust vector to five-five-zero!” Matthew barked. “Engage with all batteries!” Some part of his mind noted that the Gallant had spun out of the enemy’s path of fire just heartbeats before the enemy ships engaged, but the rest of him didn’t have time to notice. The two enemy corvette’s shield systems flared under the sustained fire of the Gallant’s energy weapons and then both vessels flared out of existence.

  “Find me another target!”

  ***

  "Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five percent..." one of the engineers muttered as Reese monitored their progress. The Temple of Communion was the central part of the Temple of Light... and it was the reason for the blockade of the planet.

  Well, he admitted, the byproduct of exposure to the Temple of Communion is the reason for the quarantine.

  There was only one entrance to the Temple of Communion. Those who went inside reported a single path, a thin span that arched over a seemingly bottomless chasm. At the center of the chamber was a platform, a huge construct from which the column of light extended upwards, crowning out of the Temple and connecting it with the station above.

  The path led inside that construct to the lensing chamber itself, where one could step into the light. Those exposed to it were never the same again... the Illuari technology stripped a person's head open and modified their minds in a process that left the survivors with horrific scars. Survivors were smarter, with the ability to focus on tasks to the exclusion of anything else. More, most gained an innate understanding for the Illuari technology, able to repair and maintain the constructs of the Temple.

  Most also became obsessed with the Temple of Light. Many were compelled to never leave, all had levels of dependency. They worked and labored here for the rest of their lives, maintaining the Illuari artifacts and constructs with the knowledge they gained.

  At one point, pilgrims had come from all over Amalgamated Worlds, seeking purpose and understanding... and the contentment that the survivors were said to have in their work.

  Of course, he thought, they're violent fanatics when threatened. Amalgamated Worlds had wanted to know how it all worked. Their research team had been violently massacred when they tried to disassemble some of the machinery. The handful of prisoners had been forcibly converted. After that, they'd quarantined the planet. They couldn't level the place, they couldn't possibly land enough troops to conquer the place, so they'd just assumed that without a source of food and supplies, the colonists would die out.

  They hadn't, though Reese didn't want to think too much about how these people had stayed alive with limited food sources. Besides, he didn't plan to remain here all that long.

  "Status of the defenses?" Reese asked.

  "Main corridor is holding, but they're about to flank the locals," his ground force commander replied. "Their powered armor is more effective than we anticipated."

  Reese only nodded. His people on this mission weren't briefed on the full plan. There was too much risk that one of
them would be captured alive. The United Colonies utilizing powered armor was part of that plan. "Is the counterattack prepared?" Reese asked.

  "Yes, we're about to launch it..."

  "Negative," Reese said, "Not until I give the order." They'd armed the locals with as many modern weapons as they could bring. A few thousand of them would be enough to push the Marines back to their landing area. But it was all about the timing...

  "Roger, sir," his ground force commander replied. "We'll wait for your signal."

  "Good," Reese said, his attention distracted by the progress bar on his datapad. "Reese out."

  He looked over the equipment. This was by far the most critical part of the operation. But he had to have the timing right or else none of this would work.

  ***

  "First Company's hitting the flank," Colonel Wachope said. Alannis could hear the excitement in his voice. "Second Company is seeing resistance drop off..."

  "There's going to be a counterattack," Alannis said.

  "Oh, I know," Colonel Wachope replied. "Our remote sensors are picking it up, but they're not moving just yet... there'll be a gap, time enough that a small force could slip through..."

  "Third Company?" Alannis asked.

  "No," Colonel Wachope replied. "I'll need them with me. No, after First Company pushes through, I'm going to punch Second Company forward... and I want you up with them."

  "Me, sir?" Alannis asked in shock.

  "Yes," Colonel Wachope let out a tense sigh, "Because there's way too many of the locals for us to fight this out. If you can get to Reese, if you can talk him down..."

  "Or kill him," Alannis interrupted.

  "...or kill him," Colonel Wachope continued, "then we can pull out of here. We don't have the forces to face a million people, and that's what we're having to do, here. The only advantage we have is that they can't bring their full numbers on us."

  "Roger, sir," Alannis said after a moment. She felt her chest tighten as she thought about confronting Reese. The last time she'd seen him in person, she'd been tied to a chair and his people had just murdered a fellow officer. The time before that was when she'd threatened him with a gun.

  I can do this, she told herself.

  She just hoped she was right.

  ***

  Sustained damage to lead elements, Sidewinder's subordinates sent, six vessels destroyed, three more forced to withdraw.

  Sidewinder didn't like those casualties. The humans had stubbornly refused to withdraw, despite the casualties he had given them. He didn't even want to fight them, they weren't his goal… they were merely in the way.

  Focus fire upon the blockade force, he sent to his subordinates, force them to withdraw. Those humans had seemed the most reluctant, yet it was obvious that they feared to flee and expose themselves to unopposed fire by their enemies.

  Sidewinder knew that was the chink in this battle. If the blockade force withdrew, then he could focus his efforts on the other humans. The ships of the Shogunate had already taken the most grievous damage, he could then smash the surviving ones and crush the remainder of his enemies.

  His attention went down to the planet. He didn't dare to land any of his vessels to root out the humans there. He had to take control of the system so that he could starve them out. They can't hold out forever, he thought to himself.

  ***

  "Move, move, move!" Lieutenant Lizmadie Doko shouted as the remains of Second Company rushed down the corridor. There were two methods that they could have used in the rush to the central part of the Temple. The first was a bounding approach each squad and platoon establishing fire positions while the follow on sections moved forward. The problem with that was that Second Company had taken enough casualties at this point that their chain of command was in disarray. Complex maneuvers like that would be too difficult to pull off in this chaotic situation and it would give the enemy time to organize a defense.

  The second option was what Gunnery Sergeant Tam had called a "thunder run."

  A dozen screaming fanatics came boiling out of a side corridor. Lizmadie aimed and fired, not even registering them as people, just targets to be serviced.

  The plasma rifle's single burst smashed in the middle of the group and flesh and bone incinerated under ten thousand degree plasma exploding outwards. The lucky ones died instantly, the unlucky ones flailed and screamed in a fashion that Lizmadie knew she'd see again in her nightmares.

  Corporal Wandry gunned the survivors down with a burst from his Talyn Mark VI assault cannon as he ran past. Lizmadie fell in beside Alannis Giovanni as the other princess rushed along. "You doing alright?" She asked as they bounded over a low barricade. She tried not to think about the bodies that her six hundred pounds of powered armor smashed into bloody ruin on the other side.

  "Fine," Alannis snapped. Lizmadie hoped that her friend could stay focused. As if to counter her worries, Alannis shoved her out of the way and opened fire as more of the scar-faced fanatics ran out of a corridor, firing weapons. Lizmadie hit the ground hard, the heavy armor skidding along the slick material of the floor, even as Alannis fired the two railguns she carried, one mounted on each arm. The two rounds punched through the ranks of the enemy, shattering bodies and throwing limbs and leaving trails of ionized air in their wakes.

  The locals recoiled from the two shots, which gave Corporal Wandry enough time to level his minigun and mow them down.

  Lizmadie pushed herself to her feet and they continued their run. "Nice reflexes," she said.

  "Yeah," Alannis replied. "It was weird, it was almost like I could feel them or something..."

  Lizmadie skidded to a halt, struck by a sudden thought. Alannis Giovanni's grandmother had been psychic... what if her friend was as well? Her brother, Prince Octavian had told her about the arrangement between the Nova Roma Emperors and the Shadow Lords, an effort to prevent any potential psychic from becoming a potential rival to the powers that the Shadow Lords possessed. Captain Beeson had her navigate the course...

  What if Alannis possessed the same abilities?

  "Contact front!" Someone shouted.

  Lizmadie pushed the thought to the back of her mind, "Push forward, heavy weapons forward!" Lizmadie shouted and ran towards the sound of gunfire.

  ***

  "Captain Bowder reports serious damage to the Lancer's forward battery, they're withdrawing!" Lieutenant Meyers called out.

  Daniel nodded, "Order Captain Copley’s Gallant to come to heading two two three and engage with his full broadside. Request Admiral Collae provide us with covering fire on that flank."

  His squadron was being hammered. Even as he'd spoken the Constellation rocked from another of the powerful energy weapons. Worse, the enemy kept some of their fire in reserve to protect against close-range missile fire. They'd killed two of his Moljnir's just outside of the launch tubes, so dangerously close that they'd nearly lost the defense screens as a result. They had lost most of their forward sensors and the Constellation was reliant upon the other ships in the squadron for targeting.

  Some of the Shogunate fighters had attempted to close and launch their missiles from point-blank, but both squadrons had simply perished, picked off before they could even launch.

  "What's the status of the mutineers?" Daniel asked as the Constellation lurched from another impact.

  "They're attempting to withdraw," Lieutenant Gray said.

  "Stay with them," Daniel said. "Keep hammering them and if they turn, focus fire." If they were in league with Reese then the last thing he wanted was to let them retreat and give him a strong reserve force. Besides, the unknown attackers seemed to be splitting their fire between the forces. As long as the mutineers stuck around, Daniel had other targets for them to face.

  "Sir, the Gallant is code black!"

  Daniel's head whipped around just as the Gallant’s antimatter plant detonated in an eye-searing flash, destroying her and killing Captain Matthew Copley along with two hundred and eighty other crew.
<
br />   ***

  Why don't these humans just die already? Sidewinder wondered. He had killed so many of them that even he felt a little sickened... yet they had destroyed many of his ships as well. They seemed incapable of retreat, though his ships had pushed them further and further back from the planet. The former blockade force had taken the brunt of the casualties and they'd finally begun to stream away, individual ships and crews panicking and fleeing... yet the core of their force continued to fight.

  Sidewinder's ship remained in close orbit of the planet, where he could safely see and direct the combat... and still fire upon any ships that attempted to escape the planet or access the Enforcer Station.

  One of the enemy cruisers vanished as a hit destroyed its reactor core. For a second, even the United Colonies ships seemed to have had enough, the surviving three vessels twisted away from his ship's fire.

  Press them, he sent to his subordinates, drive them out.

  Surely now the humans had enough of this. Surely this would be the end...

  ***

  Alannis and the others smashed through the barricaded doorway and then into a room filled with empty boxes and discarded equipment. If her sensors were right, Reese had to be in the chamber beyond. A large box lay at the center of the room, but no enemies hid behind it.

  "This way!" Alannis shouted.

  Yet before she could take another step she heard a dull thud and then Alannis's displays flickered and died.

  She smelt ozone and then the suit's servos locked up. She felt dawning horror as she realized that she'd been hit by some kind of EMP weapon. "I'm locked out..." she shouted. Yet she didn't know if her voice even penetrated the suit's armor.

  The suit went crashing down and she tasted blood as her face smashed into her displays. Alannis spit blood as she struggled to move. Yet the six hundred pounds of powered armor was now a prison, the weight holding her trapped. It should have been impossible. Any kind of electromagnetic weapon should have also compromised the antimatter containment on the power core and the armor would have exploded. At least, she thought that would be what happened.