Insurgency_Spartika

by JR Handley

  “I’ve made it,” she muttered to herself.

  When the elevator car stopped, Teon disembarked into the receiving station at the other end of the elevator. Standing straighter, trying to look more confident, Teon began looking around. The station was a bustling place, with Spacers scurrying around while a few Marines looked on impassively through the clear visors on their helmets. Why’re they still in the ACE-2s? she asked herself as she took it all in. Looking around, Teon stopped a non-rated Spacer.

  “Where’s the shuttle to the ships under construction?” she asked.

  At first, the Spacer just stared at her in confusion, before linking a map of the station to her Aimee. Directions in hand, Teon headed off to where the shuttles were waiting for their passengers. When she made it to the hangar area, she noticed that it was open to space. Teon clamped on her helmet and stepped out into the void. Upon entering the open expanse of darkness, she felt at peace. It reminded her of the dark tunnels that harbored her species during their evolutionary process. In the blackness of the void, she felt connected to all that came before her and all that would follow. Scanning around, she saw a Stork shuttle picking up another load of Spacers.

  She checked her Aimee and saw that it was traveling to the Naval Construction Unit facilities where the Human Legion was building its interstellar navy. While en route, Teon called to Commander Tizer. She knew he was the Spacer in charge of the fleet, and she wanted to report in. She attached a copy of her service record; it included her time serving the White Knights, the New Order Militia, and then the Legion Navy. Her accomplishments seemed minor, but she added it to the data package and offered to make herself useful. She bluntly explained what happened at the Baylshore Incubation Station before requesting to be put to work. Teon knew her mind demanded a challenge, and she didn’t want to be left languishing in Akoni City.

  “Welcome to the void, Master Chief. If the Marines don’t want your skills, I’ll gladly put you to work. I’ve got your location. Don’t disembark with the crew joining the HLS Antilles Moon. We named her after the Battle of Antilles Moon, but Field Marshal Nhlappo just calls her Swoons, for some reason. She picked this Tranquility Class Destroyer as the flagship of her fleet, and we’ll be taking her to rejoin the fight for humanity.”

  “HLS?” she asked.

  “Human Legion Ship. I forgot that you only recently joined the Navy without the benefit of a formal training regime. Just stay on the shuttle. They’ll bring you to me,” replied Commander Tizer.

  After acknowledging his order, Teon stepped into the shuttle and used her rank to get her a spot in the cockpit. She wanted to see what the navy had managed to build, and was thrilled when the pilots approved her request. The ride was slow as the shuttle navigated around the traffic from the two functioning orbital elevators. There was a steady stream of supplies being sent up from the Serendine factories, and the Legion Spacers had created a type of barge system to ferry it over to the construction yards.

  Starring at the readouts, she realized that the term shipyard was probably too generous. It was mostly a collection of ships’ skeletal structures, all of them open to space. Some of them had enclosed power plants, at least enough to provide for a small crew. The fact that they’d named the hulk of metal surprised her. It seemed terribly ambitious to Teon, but she’d learned the humans were a touchy lot. She knew to keep her snout closed and her paws to herself. The other ships surrounding Tranquility’s moon, she recognized. She’d been called into space to service the training hulks before the war. Shaking her head, Teon began making notes for herself. The list of work made her smile – and it was indeed a smile, though she’d been told it looked like a grimace to the humans.

  The commander was true to his word. After the crew of the Antilles Moon disembarked, Teon was taken to the construction docks. She found it ironic that the ship crew would be on the moon where the ship earned its name. The base on the moon was massive. The Legion had combined the Hardit ore-processing station with the smaller moon base, linking all the structures into one massively sprawling facility. She hoped it would ultimately be her home, because she imagined that the life aboard the unfinished ships would be grim.

  “Still beats being shot at,” she told herself.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?” asked the pilot sitting in front of her.

  Momentarily stunned, Teon had to process what she’d said. She hadn’t meant to vocalize her thoughts, but now she felt it would be impolite to ignore the officer who’d let her ride in the cockpit.

  “I lost it dodging sabots on Baylshore, sir,” she replied.

  The rest of the trip towards the coordinates Tizer had sent the pilots was blessedly silent. When Teon got there, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She hadn’t expected the pilots to tell her she would be exiting the shuttle into the open void, but they assured her that Tizer was waiting for her. With few options, she put on her helmet and checked her suit one last time before drifting out of the shuttle. Waiting for her was a human she presumed was Commander Tizer.

  She wasn’t sure what her new commander looked like, but she assumed the lone human waiting for her was him. The officer who was drifting gracefully towards her certainly wasn’t what she had envisioned. Even in his space suit, he was short by human standards. He couldn’t be more than five-foot-ten, and the way his suit sat on his frame told her that he was thin. It was a shock; even when wearing the bulky equipment and thruster pack, Tizer looked childlike. Especially when compared to the maintenance crews she’d become used to working with. He kept his visor blackened, displaying the insignia of his rank.

  After he raised a hand to beckon her, Tizer engaged her suit’s thrusters and closed the distance. She tried not to think about the shuttle which had just left her, floating in the vast nothingness, with limited oxygen. When the shock passed, Teon took it in. This was where the new construction docks would be. It looked like the suggestion of an idea rather than a place where interstellar warships would be built. The sight filled Teon with pride nonetheless – she was about to become a part of something bigger than herself. Somehow, she knew the ancestors had given her a new pack, this Legion Navy. Her family hadn’t survived Tawfiq’s New Order, and it gnawed at her to be so alone. She’d briefly found a home with Chase Arbor, but duty had separated them, and she was alone again. This new project could replace that hole in her soul.

  Once they got closer to the shipyards, she saw that there was indeed a small space for the crew to live. The mechanical part of her brain told her they’d be living off recycled oxygen and processed foods, but the idea of living there was growing on her. When they glided towards the crew compartment, Teon took it a moment to thank her ancestors for their benevolence. This was her fresh start, her reward for destroying the abominations on the planet.

  Upon entering the living area, Tizer helped her take off her bulky kit.

  “Drop your gear in the common area. I’ll have one of the non-rates – those are young privates who have not yet obtained rank – secure you an appropriate bunk. As a Master Chief, you get a room to yourself. Welcome to the Human Legion Navy.”

  Teon quickly disposed of her equipment and personal effects; her two space duffel bags contained her remaining possessions. With her hands free again, she followed Tizer into the void. He took her to the area where they were retrofitting a junk heap, which she recognized as the marooned craft where the Human Marine Corps trained cadets to assault ships in the void. Tizer talked to her during the transit, while their thruster packs propelled them to the part of the yards where the floating wrecks berthed.

  “We’ve managed to create a six-ship squadron from these restored hulks. We had to cannibalize over fifty of the Spirit Class ships to get these vessels. A twelve-percent return. Twelve percent! We probably should’ve kept them for the next generation to train on, but Nhlappo wants to send these ships to wake up some fleet. Wake up? Ugh, the navy never sleeps!”

  He interrupted himself to take a small tether o
ff his belt and shoot it at the nearest training hulk.

  “The HLS Indomitable Resurrection has been redesigned from its original state. We’ve merged all the tech we acquired, invented some more, and then shoved it into this heap you see before you. It’s been re-classified as the Spirit II Class, but we couldn’t make them larger, so they’re only frigate-sized.”

  “What will we do with them, sir?” she asked the commander as they boarded the ship.

  “The Spirit II Squadron will go to the Rakasa System to acquire more allies, if anyone is really there. Colonel Scipio thinks he can liberate a navy that is sleeping there, but I have my doubts. Navies don’t sleep. That’s pure rubbish. We’re like sea creatures – we die if we stagnate. I believe Nhlappo is humoring him, but ultimately we’re building two small fleets. One to rejoin General McEwan and the other to defend this system.”

  “Do we have the ability to crew these and deal with hostile forces at the other end? The Legion is taking heavy losses on Baylshore,” said Teon.

  “Yes, if it doesn’t get worse. In that case, the hard part will be crewing the ships themselves. We can’t strip the Tranquility System of its ability to defend itself,” Commander Tizer said.

  “Why can’t they just keep breeding more Spacers?” she asked. “Humans reproduce quickly enough that numbers won’t be an issue.”

  “True, but we don’t have infinite resources. Now, I need you to finish supervising the repair of the engines on the Spirit II vessels. The hull conversions have been completed. However, we need to get the guts of the vessels working. You can probably tell that they’re just shells, not full ships yet. That specialized work takes minds like ours to supervise, and I need to get back to the new vessel construction. Can you handle–?”

  “Yes! Yes,” she excitedly interrupted the commander again.

  “Your enthusiasm is noted. Get to work, and if the officers give you any flak, I’ll handle it.”

  — Chapter 70 —

  Early Morning, Post-Revival Day 220

  Trollstigen Pass, Baylshore

  Commander, Task Force Justice, Human Legion

  The final assault on that mutinous cholba-frakker was about to begin, and Field Marshal Nhlappo felt a sense of serenity she hadn’t felt for too long. Saving the Marines she’d been forced to abandon during Spartika’s mutiny brought her a measure of peace. She fought back tears when the last of them boarded the shuttle back for medical aide. Colonel Scipio volunteered his Task Force riding the maritime navy vessel to hoof the last seven hundred twenty miles, so their wounded Legion Marines had a chance at recovery.

  Luckily, Scipio’s task force had found enough gravsleds on the naval vessel to make up the lost time. They were handy little things, apparently intended to make loading and unloading easier. Why hadn’t the White Knights let us keep those? Nhlappo wondered. They had very few direct military applications but would make operations more efficient from a purely logistical standpoint.

  Her heart finally at ease, or as close to it as she could get until she reunited with her surviving children, Tirunesh slept while her Marines prepared for the final assault. Resting allowed her medical nanobots to continue healing her sabot wounds, and her cognition to recharge. She felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders when her new AI, Gabrielle, finally woke her. It was time to seize the Trollstigen Pass. She was back in the fight.

  “Sergeant Major Anderson, how long until we’re ready to move out?”

  The sergeant major had been expecting the question, and promptly answered.

  “We’re ready to go. Give the word, and the unit we’re leaving here will pull off.”

  Turning in surprise, she addressed the sergeant major.

  “We leave no one. Dispatch a single combat drone. Until we control the planet, this patch of dirt is useless. Besides, we’ve acquired alternative food sources from Colonel Terloar. Move us out, Sergeant Major!”

  The resulting roar of his staccato voice pushing the task force forward brought a sense of normalcy, one that had been hard to come by while fighting their fellow Marines. She knew they referred to the enemy as insurgents because that made fighting them easier to accept, but they were still fellow Marines. After the usual prodding, everyone loaded up into the farming utility vehicles for the ride to Trollstigen Pass. She knew they couldn’t take the trucks the whole way. Trucks were too loud and offered very little in the form of military protection. They did, however, significantly cut the travel time and let her Marines arrive at the fight well rested.

  She remembered the last time Marines had ridden these into a military operation – Marine Arun McEwan had outsmarted his Hardit overseers. Nhlappo had to shake her head, irked that she’d used the same strategy as that fool. She still didn’t know why she followed him, though she’d never tell him so. He was a charismatic fool, but he was her fool, and the computer in his brain made him useful. And if he could pull off human autonomy, so much the better. Secretly, however, she didn’t think the humans on Earth would be so willing to follow some erstwhile son from the heavens.

  While she bounced around in the back of the farming vehicle, she observed the fallow fields and the dirt road that led into the Gjende Mountains. Meanwhile, Nhlappo reviewed updates from the Spacers building her fleet. She was pleased with the progress, especially when she heard that Tizer had somehow acquired one of the Spacers under GG’s command to assist him. He’d glossed over the story, but she knew she’d be hearing about it later. If it got her a finished interstellar fleet, she didn’t care. She knew in just over a year, her flagship would have its frame built, and others would be rolling off the assembly lines once the ground war stopped clogging the works. What pleased her more was the progress being made on the completion of the building infrastructure.

  “Gabrielle, what does the capture of the Baylshore factories do for our timelines?”

  The addition of two more factories will cut the time in half, and then in half again once they have the shipyards finished. The Human Legion Navy is burdened by more Spacers than they have work. We’ll improve our construction time exponentially as we get more of them onto the assembly line.

  “Excellent. Patch me into the task force LBNet, please,” she said as the vehicles rumbled to a stop.

  “Listen up, Marines. You’ve done an admirable job so far, but we’re not done yet. One last mountain to climb, and a traitorous enemy to put down. Sergeant Major, take the rear element and stay on comms. Commanders, take charge of your regiments, and let’s move out.”

  Once she’d given her orders, Nhlappo watched their advance aerial drones scan the ground for thermal signs. She was looking for any sign of a trap. Since she couldn’t find anything, she turned to examining the area visually. The hard-packed dirt road wound through the pass carved through the mountains. The high mountain walls left the pass in a perpetual shadow of the Gjende Mountain. She looked at the steep rock walls of the mountains the road passed through, not seeing any indication of enemy insurgent positions. When she found nothing, she had the drones circle through again.

  With nothing to justify her caution, she ordered her forces pushed into the pass. She had every one of her drones out and scanning the terrain. They checked farther ahead, looking deeper into the pass. She had others tasked with scanning the heights, fearing an ambush from above. It seemed like Spartika hadn’t considered the merit of securing the pass, which was alarming. Spartika had previously captured the Legion’s special forces Marines in this very pass and executed them very publicly.

  Nhlappo was right to suspect a trap.

  The enemy appeared out of nowhere, hiding in thermally cloaked bunkers cut into the walls of the pass. More bunkers were positioned on the heights, giving the insurgents a deadly field of fire. They’d managed to fool the sensors, despite the drones looking for thermal anomalies. They’d use another thermal wavelength to the mask their signature, causing enough of a difference that they were missed. That level of thermal dynamics hadn’t been considere
d by Nhlappo’s engineers. The change was drastic enough that it had caught her unprepared. Previously, Spartika had only used existing technology in more creative and devious ways. Inventing new technology wasn’t something they’d thought the Aux traitor capable of.

  The Marines of Task Force Justice acted instantaneously, dropping into combat stances as they attempted to return fire. The small unit leaders were coordinating up and down the chain of command, trying to regain the initiative. Some of the task force’s more enterprising souls began attempting to climb the rocky face of the pass. The price in blood they paid was steep, but they managed to silence a few of the bunkers. She knew that her losses would’ve been worse if they’d been in the older armor.

  The Legion’s drones were in a hybrid state, armed like combat drones but functioning in a scout capacity. Nhlappo was about to demand to know why the drones hadn’t activated a full combat status when the senior engineering officer beat her to it. The drones quickly began attempting to join the fight, taking out several enemy insurgents. Nhlappo saw a threat warning appear on her HUD as enemy drones popped out of another hidden bunker.

  “Take out those drones,” she ordered the engineers.

  The Legion engineers controlling their drones were skilled, and already attempting to do just that. Quickly destroying enemy drones, they pushed on. The engineers wanted to get into the fight and were using every trick they’d learned from years of combat experience. They managed to drop one of their remaining bactabomb grenades into the bunker that had just sent out Spartika’s drones. The destruction triggered an avalanche, and rocks crashed down into the pass. The dust cleared, and Nhlappo surveyed the scene while her Marines continue to engage the enemy.