A Pale Dawn Read online

  Jim checked his suit’s endurance. Power was still at 90%, and jump juice was nearly full. It was a good thing; they had just over 100 kilometers to cover to get to Gitmo’s position. There, they could top off again from their reserve packs and push on to the objective. Once that was secured, he’d bring down dropships with another company and resupply. He could get an orbital supply drop, though those usually had a way of drawing unwanted attention.

  Splunk jumped onto the edge of his cockpit and gave him a thumbs up. Jim looked over to see Tucker already climbing back into his CASPer. “Great job,” he said and held out a hand.

  “No problem, ” she said and slapped him a low five. She looked over at the next suit where the driver was trying to get out and headed over immediately. Jim grinned and watched her go to work. Every one of his men he could see was grinning as well. They all loved the little Fae, and why wouldn’t they? She was like an entire squad of maintenance techs, and all it cost them was an occasional pack of pepperoni or meat snacks. Everyone in the Cavaliers usually packed a snack or two for her; a little bribery never hurt.

  Everyone used the pause to see to any personal issues. Some needed to take a quick relief break, others just drank some water or munched a ration bar. Jim went around to all the men and said a word or two. Spirits were high now that they were finally taking the fight to the enemy.

  As usual, Splunk didn’t disappoint. Jim’s clock still showed seven minutes remaining when she leaped into his cockpit and popped a cute-as-fuck salute. “All done, ”

  “Awesome!” Jim said and scratched between her ears. She gave a coo of appreciation and headed down inside the CASPer to his left leg where she had room. Safe and secure, she was ready for action. With five minutes left, Jim sealed his cockpit. “Everyone up; squads report,” he called over the squadnet.

  “All ready,” Sergeant Ester “Buckshot” Martin called from Second Platoon, Second Squad.

  “Ready,” Sergeant Willy “Wonka” Peskal said from Second Platoon, First Squad.

  “Good to go,” Sergeant Lamb said, First Platoon, Second Squad.

  “All squads check,” his top sergeant agreed. “Ready to go, Colonel.”

  “By squads,” Jim ordered, “let’s go.”

  As was tradition, Jim was the first out of the ballroom. A pair of young people were huddled near the hotel desk. When Jim came tromping out of the ballroom in his huge Mk 7 CASPer, they gawked at him in amazement.

  “You here to get rid of the aliens?” the braver of the two asked.

  “Yes, we are,” Jim said, waving the rest of his squad forward.

  “You going to bring back the Council?” the other asked.

  Jim accessed his pinplant data on Talus. The Council was the name of the planet’s leadership council. The article did some comparisons to the old Soviet Union’s Politburo. “Did the alien mercs remove this Council?” Jim asked.

  “No,” the first boy answered, “there was a revolution a while before the aliens got here.”

  “Yeah,” the other one said, “the aliens moved in while we were kinda fighting over a new government. The aliens have been talking to some of the old Council after they let them out of prison.”

  Holy shit, Jim thought. This place is a mess. “We’re just here to get rid of the aliens,” Jim assured the two young people. “What you do with your planet is up to you.”

  The looked at each and nodded, then they both left via another door.

  “That was weird,” Hargrave said. He’d been just behind Jim.

  “We knew this planet had issues,” Jim said. “We just didn’t know how big those issues were.” He looked back in the direction the two kids had disappeared and saw no signs of where they’d gone. Now that he thought about the interaction, he wondered if he’d made a mistake talking to them. Too late to worry about it now.

  Out in the wide paved streets, the men broke into their squads and moved laterally on various roads toward the northeast. They reached the end of the town proper with one minute left on his clock.

  “Cartwright Actual,” he called on the tactical channel, “we’re in position and standing by.” He switched back to the squadnet. “Cavaliers, get ready.” He and Buddha trotted out from under cover the second his counter reached zero, walking fifty meters past the edge of the town.

  Jim tried to suppress his uneasiness at being out in the open. His cameras were on 360-degree mode, feeding a wraparound view into his mind through his pinplants. It took some getting used to, but he’d been doing it since his first days in a CASPer. Now he added the suit’s integral radar to the view and created a hybrid radar/visual overlay that included directly above them. The only problem was the suit’s radar range—less than two kilometers. It was going to be tight.

  The radar pinged multiple contacts. Jim triggered his jumpjets and yelled “Incoming!” at the same time. Buddha was on his game, and he triggered his jumpjets at the same time Jim did. The two CASPers leaned back sharply, angling toward the town they’d just left. Jim guessed they were thirty meters away from where they started when the first bomb hit. The shockwaves slapped them like a flyswatter.

  “Shit!” he yelled and fought the suit’s controls, trying to level his flight. The building he slammed into ended that effort. “Oof!” The Mk 7 CASPer weighed in at just over 500 kilograms. Composed of high-tech metal and carbon fiber alloys, it was designed to absorb a lot of damage—more damage than the brick building side he careened into. The wall crumbled, which was good, because Jim managed to hit it face first. He was slammed forward against his restraints as the CASPer tumbled into the building’s interior, coming to a stop half-embedded in a large wooden bureau.

  “Not my finest move,” he mumbled as he extracted himself, rolling to the combat suit’s feet. The system’s diagnostics indicated his left elbow and right knee actuation systems were overstressed by 14 and 22 percent, respectfully. Not bad, considering. “Buddha, you okay?”

  The Polynesian top sergeant had been with Cartwright’s longest next to Hargrave. His telltale on Jim’s command status board was green, as well as his bio readings. However, experience told him you could be hurt badly and have that little light still glowing green.

  “A-okay, Jim,” Buddha said. “I controlled the roll and landed.”

  Quit bragging. In the years he’d been a professional merc, Jim’s skill in the CASPer had continued to grow—at least he didn’t ruin a suit every time he went into combat, not anymore. That said, controlling the suit in radical flight was still a skill that eluded him. “Good job. I’ll join up as soon as I get out of this wrecked house.”

  Jim looked around at the interior. The nearby dresser was empty, with all the drawers pulled out. Like everywhere else in Sulphur Springs, the evacuation was obvious and disorganized. Ordered by the aliens? Jim wondered. The city—with its long-abandoned air fields—certainly had the feeling of a trap. Probably a damned good thing the occupation force hadn’t thought to plant a nuke or two, otherwise there might be one less Horsemen just then. They probably thought we’d land here in force, and could then assault in force, Jim concluded.

  He pushed back through the damaged wall out to where Corporal Seamus “Moose” Curran and Private Ventura were waiting.

  “Good to go, boss?” Moose asked.

  Jim flashed him a thumbs up. He focused his sensors into the sky. The enemy fighters were tearing away, climbing fast. A group of twenty silver flashes dove out of the sky after them. “Surprise, bitches,” Jim said as the Winged Hussars drones tore into the enemy fighters. What followed was an intense, minute-long dogfight.

  Normal drones were no match for a well-manned atmospheric fighter. The variabilities of atmosphere and gravity, in addition to the limits on a drones’ performance in air, put the drones at a tactical disadvantage. But these weren’t regular drones. Jim had heard stories about the Hussars’ drone capabilities, not to mention Pegasus’. Now he understood their unique capabilities better. Ghost, the Hussar’s sec
ret AI, no doubt programmed the drones itself, giving them unmatchable combat abilities.

  Seventeen drones flashed back up toward space, leaving behind a dozen burning wrecks. The Cavaliers around Jim cheered and pumped their fists and weapons in the air.

  “Let’s go!” Hargrave yelled over the squadnet and lifted off with a roar.

  “You heard the XO,” Buddha said and shot into the sky. “Move it, Shovel Heads!” After a second, the rest of the Cavaliers, including Jim, were airborne.

  The company of CASPers raced across the rolling hills east of Sulphur Springs. The powered armor could run at speeds approaching 40 kilometers per hour. Using their jumpjets in great, bounding leaps, that speed increased to 100 kilometers per hour. Of course, that was in the hands of a highly experienced operator.

  The technique was simple; at least on paper it was simple. The CASPers had jets powered by a fuel known collectively as jump juice, a fuel whose formation had varied considerably over the century-long history of CASPers. In the early days it was a highly toxic hypergolic mix of hydrazine, and it was deadly if there was an accident. The modern version was oxygenated and highly refined kerosene. With a pair of thrusters in the back and one in the rear of each leg, they collectively provided enough thrust to propel the suit vertically for 100 meters before thermal safeties shut them down.

  To move forward quickly, you leaned forward and fired your jumpjets for a hard two count, rocketing the suit into the air twenty or thirty meters, and forward at up to 100 kilometers per hour. You continued leaning forward, put one leg ahead and pulsed that jumpjet to slow the landing, bent your knees to absorb the impact, took a single stride, and fired the jets again for a hard two count. Boom, you were running like a superhero.

  Yeah, easy, Jim thought as he did the best he could. He used a subroutine in his pinplants to help the process. Using the program, he could move in jumpjet-assisted bounds at maximum speed, providing the ground was flat, there was no wind, and the gravity a nominal one G. Talus had a lighter gravity, the ground was broken rolling hills, and there was a strong southerly wind.

  “Son…of…a…bitch!” Jim yelled in time with his long powerful strides. He almost fell twice in the first kilometer, jumping badly and just catching himself. He forced the suit back on course. He was not going to crash or fall behind, because if he did they wouldn’t leave him, even if he ordered them to, and that would mean the company would get caught in the open. “Fuck…that!” he yelled in the cockpit as he landed and jumped again. Then again. And then again.

  “I think I’m getting it,” he said and jumped again. He began to realize the reason he’d never mastered the bounding movement was necessity. His father, Thaddeus, often said that necessity was the mother of invention. In this case, it appeared to be the mother of a skill which had eluded him.

  The kilometers raced by at 1.6 per minute. His suit’s computer, constantly monitoring all aspects of operation, estimated they were going 114 kph—better than what the manual said was possible. That was good, because the aliens in charge of planetary defense would know they’d just lost a dozen fighters and would respond quickly.

  Jim’s forward-facing camera picked up movement high in the sky. A delta of three darts left contrails as they headed south toward Sulphur Springs. He tracked them through his bounding leaps; the delta stayed at an extreme altitude as it moved south, until he could see shapes falling away. A few seconds later Sulphur Springs was engulfed in a series of rolling explosions as the aliens carpet-bombed the city.

  Entropy, he swore. They destroyed the entire city!

  The CASPers played cat and mouse with the enemy for the hour it took Jim’s unit to reach Gitmo’s position. If their adversaries had bothered to come in force, they could have found Jim. Losing a dozen fighters in one fell swoop seemed to have dissuaded them from trying another mass air attack. Luckily, they didn’t seem to realize the Hussars’ drones had returned to space and were no longer available.

  As they approached Gitmo’s, the Cavaliers came under their fellow unit’s air protection. Gitmo’s had dropped with air defense, albeit not a lot of it. A legacy of their USMC lineage, they liked to be prepared for everything. The Cavaliers only carried what they knew they would need. They hadn’t expected an air attack in force.

  “Welcome, Colonel Cartwright,” Colonel Spence called as Jim’s Mk 7 CASPer bounded toward the defensive line.

  “Colonel Spence,” Jim said, “call me Jim. How are you holding out?”

  “Then call me Dan,” he replied, a smile in his voice. “We’re fine, just tired of hunkering down.”

  “You’re better off here than Sulphur Springs,” Hargrave said. “They pasted it right after we broke out.”

  “Hargrave, you old war dog,” Spence said and slapped his armored hand on Hargrave’s suit shoulder. “Been a long time.”

  “Sure has,” Hargrave agreed. “I wanted to meet up while we were in New Warsaw and tip a few. Just never had the chance.”

  “Things were too wild, and everything happened too fast,” Spence agreed.

  “How long before you can pull out?” Jim asked, looking around. Gitmo’s Own had made good use of the rocky ground to create basic protective trenches, all excavated with high explosive charges. Their gig was to assault from orbit against heavily dug-in targets. Jim was sure that if they’d known about the missile site at Leaning Peak, Spence would have just dropped in on top of them and blown the place to hell.

  Spence was quiet for a second, no doubt talking to his various lieutenants and his XO. “We can be ready to move in two minutes.”

  Wow, Jim thought, these guys know how to move. “Roger that,” he said aloud, then switched to his squadnet. “Prepare to move!” In two minutes, both companies were ready to go, and they bounded up the road toward the mountains.

  * * *

  EMS Pegasus, Orbiting Frost, Asyola Star System

  Alexis floated in her ready room, using her pinplants to sort reports on the conquest of Frost. It was a mixed lot. She’d lost three ships in dislodging the Zuul defenders; two disabled and one effectively wrecked. She’d expected to take losses, and all things considered, these were light. The two cruisers were a hard loss. They were repairable, but it meant docking them with Byczyna and hauling them back to New Warsaw. Both had high casualties, too.

  The Bloom-class frigate Chrysanthemum was a loss. Her reactors had been destroyed, and the engineers who’d gone over to assess the ship said she also had damage to her central core. Basically, she’d been shot to shit, and her crew was all dead. Alexis had another frigate shove her out of orbit so the ship didn’t accidentally crash on an inhabited area. After the remaining consumables and ordinance was removed, Byczyna used the hulk for gunnery practice.

  Moving on to the so-so news, she reviewed the report from Colonel Desmond of Micky Finn. After taking the orbiting defense platform with no losses, he’d moved on to the other two orbital facilities with only a few losses. That was good. Then he went with two Hussars frigates and their own ship, Blarney Stone, to assault the main space objective: Frost’s two shipyards.

  As the task force approached the shipyards, they started taking fire from static defenses and had to fall back. Blarney Stone was a typical merc cruiser with average shields and average armor, and it wasn’t terribly maneuverable, either. The shipyard defenses were a pair of 500-gigawatt particle cannons and a slew of missile launchers. Under a screen from the frigates, all three ships fell back to reevaluate the operation. The follow-up to that was still under review.

  Next, she pulled up the ground-side reports. The assault had landed in three phases. Overall command was with Colonel Andrew Sivula and his Muerte Negra heavy assault unit. His one company of CASPers was joined by Colonel Frank Hart’s Titty Twisters with another company of CASPers, and Colonel Emma Marchand’s Flambeaux Calais. The latter was a mixed command with an entire battalion of older CASPers, and another battalion of light-armored infantry. They landed just outside the industrial cen
ter of Touku.

  Touku was also the location of Frost’s major starport, and they had expected the assault there would be the hardest. Sivula elected to land his own company right outside the starport, drawing the most enemy attention. Two companies of Jivool troopers immediately engaged and stalled his attack. He allowed himself to be pinned down and had Colonel Hart put his company down on the other side of the starport and hit the Jivool from behind.

  When Colonel Marchand landed, her numerically superior forces overwhelmed the remaining defenses at the starport. Touku fell three hours after the initial landing, and the Jivool surrendered before Hart’s attack on their flank even materialized.

  The second phase of the assault was against the capital of Trake, twenty kilometers east of Touku and on the edge of a sea which was iced over 2/3 of the year. It was led by Colonel Bayu Li with his Laut Yang Tenang. A mixed light assault unit composed of a battalion of light infantry with a single platoon of older CASPers for fire support, they hit the capital from a low ridgeline to the north. The city defenders, a single company of Aposa, along with some Besquith, were dug in on the west side, expecting a follow-up attack from Touku.

  The aliens rushed to stop the attacking Laut Yang Tenang just as Colonel Enrico Sousa’s Espade Sangrenta landed where the aliens had originally expected the attack. Sousa’s troops were a garrison unit with a company of mixed aged CASPers and a company of armor. They’d trained to work the two disparate unit types in concert with each other and had developed a reputation for creative tactics. Once those two components were in place, Sousa landed his battalion of light infantry and air mobile artillery.

  The fighting became house to house, with the city’s residents fleeing in disarray. However, Sousa’s infantry flooded into the city and soon engulfed the Aposa/Besquith forces. The Besquith managed to break out to the east, heading out over the ice, while the Aposa were isolated and hunted down. They fought to the last, like rats usually did.