by JR Handley
The next three hours felt unnecessarily long, and the Marines of Task Force Vengeance dug in. They had to be prepared to repel an enemy assault, should Spartika’s insurgent forces decide they weren’t going to wait around. He knew this was unlikely; they’d want to hold their lines and use every ounce of benefit they could derive from the defensive barricade they’d created. Lance knew the conventional wisdom said the defender always had an advantage, and he counted on them waiting for that very reason. Right on schedule, the Apani Gravtank arrived and pulled up beside him, having traveled several hundred miles from the coast to the outpost. The crew waited for orders, so Lance told Lieutenant Hyat to supervise the implementation of his plan.
With so many hands assisting them, they made short work of loading the explosives and the copy of the AI onto the gravtank. When everything was set, Lance nodded to the engineer and told him to start the assault. Lance wanted to honor Lieutenant Hyat’s ingenuity by allowing him to initiate the charge. Granting that privilege had a long and storied history within the ranks of the Human Marine Corps, and Lance saw a benefit in carrying on the tradition. Once the order was given, the AI-controlled gravtank burst through the entrance into the outpost, firing its weapons at the defending enemy Marines.
The gravtank blew chunks off the wide entrance as it obliterated the enemy’s defensive positions. Lance watched with pride as the unmanned vehicle swept into the outpost. It took the path his regiments would’ve charged, saving lives. He silently prayed the vehicle would kill as many of the enemy insurgents as possible, sparing his Legion Marines. He listened to the pings of sabots bouncing off the gravtank. They didn’t stop the vehicle, and Lance knew more insurgents would be dying under the weight of the Apani’s guns.
The gravtank reached the top of the slapdash barricade, using its engines to shove the enemy back. Sitting on top of the wrecked barrier, directly centered on the enemy defenses, it exploded. The engineers had overestimated the number of explosives needed. The massive explosion inadvertently tripled the size of the entrance into the outpost. Lance was again reminded of his luck at being paired with Xena, who’d not so gently suggested that the task force pull back from the entrance. Her suggestion saved even more lives as parts of the outpost fortifications and bits of the gravtank crashed into the lines the Marines had vacated.
The moments immediately after the explosion were eerily silent. Neither side reacted. When the dust settled, they saw that it was because none of the defenders remained. Deciding to err on the side of caution, Lance ordered his task force to advance, systematically assaulting the remains of the insurgents’ position. They didn’t find any bodies, only parts of bodies, small pieces of armor, and blood. Their best guess was that none of the defenders survived, and Lance was grateful that his troops had.
They cleared the rest of the outpost with relative ease and were able to resupply their force from the equipment the Human Marine Corps had left stored there. Evidently, Lance was correct in assuming they’d decided to gamble everything on defending the entrance. Since Spartika had denied the Legion the use of the maglev lines, it was a safe assumption. Were it not for Hyat’s quick thinking, Task Force Vengeance would’ve paid a hefty price to breach the facility.
Realizing they had a long wait on their hands, Sergeant Major Thorn suggested Lance have his AI upgrade those belonging to the 941st. Those increased abilities would allow them to be more fully integrated with Legion forces. The victory had occurred quicker than they’d estimated. Lance knew the next assault wouldn’t be as easy – he couldn’t count on getting that lucky. He decided to request enough ACE-4s to outfit their new allies, as well, though he wasn’t holding his breath. With so few shuttles, resupply from Akoni was dubious, at best.
— Chapter 66 —
Late Afternoon, Post-Revival Day 218
Alabama Depot, Baylshore
Commander, Task Force Justice, Human Legion
Field Marshal Nhlappo sat in the Stork, trying to stifle her groan of pain. The wait for their ride from their newly secured outpost to their next objective hadn’t been long enough. She was still recovering from the multiple sabot-fire wounds she received when seizing the Multi-Use Factory. The loss of Brinx, her AI and longtime companion, was tough, and she was struggling to process it while staying in the fight. Her job was made even more difficult as she struggled to adjust to a new AI who thought it was sentient. It had decided it was female and didn’t want to be called Killer.
I shall henceforth be known as Gabrielle, it had told her with a weirdly pious reverence.
Shaking off the strange behavior and making a mental note to consult the technical experts later, Nhlappo focused on her task force’s next objective. They were going to assault the Alabama Depot, the farming complex that once fed her and the Marines of Detroit City when she’d been a training sergeant. She’d come a long way since then, abandoning the Human Marine Corps to side with the Human Legion led by her former cadet, Arun McEwan. She knew what the facility used to look like, but who knew what changes Spartika had wrought?
Wrought? “Gabrielle” must be getting to me already, Nhlappo thought with a grunt.
The Alabama Depot was a sprawling complex, full of open fields and squat outbuildings. The sheer number of small farm buildings was staggering, but what stood out was the large warehouse that stored the harvest. This was where the crops were held before being sent to the processing plant, which was built with security in mind. The warehouse had it all – fences, guard towers, auto-turrets, a small barracks, and access roads to allow the guards to respond quickly when needed.
Beside the structure, she remembered, there was a large abandoned slave pen that the New Order had built. It housed the captured humans prior to their slaughter, and she suspected Spartika would be using it to hold any Marines who didn’t agree to her command of the forces inside New Detroit. She made a point to add a distinctive mark on the map they’d gotten from the aerial scans, since it was likely only used at night. Their daytime scan showed it as abandoned and marked it as a low priority, but Nhlappo suspected otherwise.
She was just about to order the Marines of Task Force Justice to prepare for the aerial drop when she received an urgent update from Colonel Scipio. He’d found intelligence indicating that the depot was some sort of prison work camp for Marines who’d remained loyal to Nhlappo, guarded by combat drones and enemy forces fanatically loyal to Spartika. I knew it, she thought to herself. I’d suspected it but couldn’t say anything without proof. They already think my views on Spartika are skewed, for all they follow me. Now they’ll see how right I was about that traitorous Aux. Despite her pain, she smiled when she saw that alert. She could save the lives of some of the Marines she’d been forced to abandon during the mutiny, while proving that she’d been right all along.
“Change of plans,” she told the pilots over their secure squadron frequency. “I need you to risk a low strafing run, targeting the combat drones and anyone holding carbines. Anyone unarmed is assumed to be friendly, and we will start the aerial drops the minute you take out the drones. Make it happen!”
Nhlappo quickly copied her subordinate commanders on the plan while the shuttle banked hard and started its strafing run. The shuttle jinked to avoid being targeted by the enemy below, lashing her hard against her seat straps. Monitoring the situation on the pilot’s channel, she knew they were making a second pass to take out the drones they missed. With the last of the insurgents’ drones destroyed, a surprisingly large number of them, the pilots stabilized their craft so the task force could jump. They’d learned the painful lesson on the limits of the enemy tether traps, and made sure to stay well above the threshold.
“Green light, chuckleheads,” she told her task force. “Time to kill some traitorous bastards and save a few of our own. You’re weapons free on any armed combatant, but anyone unarmed should be deemed friendly. As I suspected, Alabama Depot has been converted into a prison camp. Those are our boys down there, so don’t miss.”
She
heard the faint sound of the hurrah shouted by her troops as she stepped into the clear Tranquility sky. The enemy didn’t react at first, unprepared for the sight of the Marines of Task Force Justice pouring out of the shuttles. If they had better lines of communication, this wouldn’t be a shock, she thought to herself. The actions of Spartika’s loyal traitors didn’t stop her Marines from firing sabot after sabot into them. Her Marines began taking a toll on the enemy before they’d even realized they were under attack.
When the last Marine of her task force touched down, there wasn’t a single enemy troop left standing. Given that they were loyal to Spartika, she knew they could never be trusted again. They couldn’t be left in the system to foment rebellion, which meant Nhlappo had few options for dealing with their wounded. She couldn’t take them with her when she rejoined the main body of the Human Legion, for fear they would side with the enemy and sabotage the Legion’s war effort. And it was a waste of resources to continue feeding them as prisoners, regardless of where they were housed. She decided to hold a trial, where she would serve as judge, jury, and executioner. They were guilty and needed to die.
“For crimes against the enemy, those insurgent Marines loyal to Spartika have been sentenced to death. Arrange for one in the head, please, Sergeant Major.”
Nobody acknowledged her order, but there was a brief uptick in the sounds of sabot fire, and Nhlappo knew her order had been followed. She took no joy in it, but she had few choices while they were still at war. As they executed the wounded insurgents, the medics treated the Legion’s wounded. One of the freed prisoners used the opportunity to walk up to her, naked but for a loincloth. She attempted to stand up straight and render a salute, despite her leathery, blistered skin sagging on her undernourished frame.
“Stand at ease, Marine,” Nhlappo told the prisoner, who seemed close to tears.
“It’s been so long, we thought you’d abandoned us,” said the female. “Corporal Sanchez, reporting in for duty, ma’am.”
“No, Corporal, you were never forgotten. We just had to wade through an army of Hardits to get here.”
Rather than leave the naked, wounded, and malnourished prisoners to suffer the effects of the sun, she ordered the freed prisoners to the shelter that was once available for the Aux.
“They destroyed the shelter,” said Sanchez. “We’ve been exposed the entire time. They give us medical nanobot shots every third day to keep us slaving away but never healthy enough to be a threat.”
Turning to her sergeant major, she spoke to him through her helmet’s speakers so the prisoners could hear. He’d come up to stand behind her while she was listening to the prisoners tell her about their ordeal in the prison camp.
“I want these brave and loyal Marines to be fed, and shelter found for them. Stick them wherever their guards were stationed, and if it isn’t enough, build something. And build somewhere for us to wait, until we’re ready to assault the next objective. Let the troops take their helmets off and rest for a bit. I’ve just sent a message to the shuttle squadron. They’re sending a few Storks. We’re going to get them back to Akoni City. They deserve the best medical care we’ve got.”
She knew it wasn’t much, and that some of these Marines would still be crippled and potentially die, but now they’d have a chance.
— Chapter 67 —
Early Morning, Post-Revival Day 219
Human Marine Corps Outpost Bravo 5, Baylshore
Commander, Task Force Retribution, Human Legion
No one survived the loyalty purges rampant in the officer ranks of the Human Marine Corps under the White Knight’s tenure without developing a healthy dose of caution. Brevet Field Marshal Gaarjar wouldn’t risk landing the Storks while there was the constant threat of the enemy’s tether traps. GG studied the reports she’d been given by Colonel Scipio.
She knew that Human Marine Corps Outpost Bravo 5 was on the southernmost tip of the Baylshore continent. It was an odd mix, situated where the cold polar weather met the lush greenery of the continent. The outpost was surrounded by small clusters of trees; they weren’t quite forests but were too big to just be called groves. She sent the updated sensor readings from the shuttles to her regimental commanders and started reviewing their assault plans.
“Field Marshal, we’ll have to take the trees and shrubbery into account when we pick our drop zones. What we really need is information on the outer defenses,” said Colonel Abass.
The colonel was one of the most junior regimental commanders in the task force, and GG knew the other commanders might disregard her ideas out of hand. Wanting to ensure this didn’t happen, she responded quickly.
“There appear to be no outer defenses, but we can’t risk a pass low enough to detect any of the pit traps. There might still be small groups of enemy insurgents out there. We’ll have to trust our subordinate commanders to adapt to facts on the ground.”
Another officer, seeing the data, sent several proposed drop zones for the three regiments of Task Force Retribution. GG studied the notes and agreed. She recognized that these were the best landing zone available, at least based on their limited data. She approved the plan and sent the information to the pilots. With the aid of their AIs, the course was plotted, and the pilot acknowledged his receipt of the orders.
“We’ll be over the drop zone in one hundred twenty seconds,” said the senior pilot.
“Make ready,” GG ordered her officers.
She efficiently performed a last-minute functions check on her kit before she was satisfied that everything was ready. After unharnessing herself from the drop seat on the shuttle, GG worked her way back to the rear exit. She preferred to jump from the back, believing the divine goddess of life’s breath would reward her devotion. Most Jotun officers worshipped Tyndall, the goddess of honor. GG preferred to honor the life-bringer instead, viewing her work as an engineer as being fundamentally about saving the lives of those under her command. She knew that sometimes to save a life, you had to take a life, but didn’t dwell on that negative aspect. Instead, she focused only on the salvation, believing her good deeds needed the negative ones to bring balance to the universe.
Her HUD lit green, and she walked off the back ramp and plummeted towards the surface of Tranquility. She took in the beauty of the early morning on the planet she’d come to know and love, the vibrant greens and browns of the open plains and the gray from the clustered rock formations. With no perceived enemy on the sensors, she let herself simply be in the moment. There would be time for death and damnation later. When her AI, Cray, told her to make ready, she let her thrusters orient her right-side-up and began relaxing herself in preparation for the final impact.
“Start updating our task force’s status the moment they touch down,” she ordered Cray.
While they established a defensive perimeter, something they’d done a thousand times before, she let her engineering mind take over. Old habits were hard to kick, and she pulled out her personal scout drones. She sent them into the outpost and lost the signal. Thinking they could’ve been shot down by the often-forgotten beam weapon on the SA-71, she sent her backup drone out. Redundancy was life, at least as far as an engineer was concerned. This was a combat drone; it sacrificed signal quality and stealth for offensive and defensive capabilities. She’d also know if it was hit, as it would self-destruct rather than let itself fall into enemy hands. The Legion couldn’t risk classified data being compromised.
Scanning the immediate area in an assault pattern, GG saw the enemy hadn’t defended the external sally ports. There were four that looked boxy but wide enough for a single gravtank to enter or exit the outpost. The other three were smaller, designed for a Marine in combat armor to utilize. All of them were made of gray polycrete, with matching guard boxes attached. The ramps that the sally ports covered sloped gently downward, out of sight. She knew they flattened out several times for chokepoints with hidden nests above them in the ceiling for defending troops to drop grenades and sabots on a
ny unwary forces attacking the facility. Then the ramp ended at the first level of the outpost, a garrison for the troops assigned to the site. It had one central passageway, with large rooms full of bunk beds and footlockers that surrounded the common area in the middle.
Through that common area ran the main passageway, which had a slight bend to it, preventing anyone from firing from one end to the other. Just around the bend, where the main level started to become the sloping ramp into the second, the enemy built a chest-high barricade. It was made of polycrete, and her cursory scans showed it to be a few meters thick, with firing ports cut into it at several heights. GG contemplated the problem, trying to see it from every angle, but couldn’t find a solution. The defenses would cost her more lives than she could afford. The victory over those enemy insurgents would endanger the plans for the final assault on New Detroit City. She passed her analysis to her commanders, who were reviewing the data and the list of known enemy tactics.
“What about the dead men’s suits?” asked Colonel Messer.
“That’s brilliant, using their tactics against them. We can strip a battalion of Marines of their combat armor, leaving copies of their AIs in the suits. They can put the main chips in their Aimees. Your unarmored Marines can guard the outer perimeter and protect our rear.”
She paused and listened to the colonel’s protestation at being left in the rear. She knew he wasn’t ready for combat; he was taking the losses too hard. She struggled to salve his pride, despite him.
“Pick one of your battalions for the task, and lead the rear element. You’ll have to control the AI-suits from the outside. It’ll require concentration and a keen mind. You’ll have to fight on two fronts, since the outer perimeter will still need to be guarded.”
“I’m no engineer,” Colonel Messer protested. “You should lead up this contingent.”
GG had finally had enough. “You have your orders, Colonel. I’ll stay long enough to show you how to get the program activated. Then I’ll lead the assault. Senior officers cannot command from the rear.”
