A Pale Dawn Read online

  Alexis noted the route and retreat of the Besquith and could see they were heading for a small fishing settlement built on the ice some thirty kilometers out in the ocean. She made a note to have Ghost send a squadron of drones to blow the wolves to hell. She wasn’t in the mood to play games.

  While the capital was being mopped up, Colonel Doug Triplett’s Copperheads landed at the last objective, the fishing and industrial town of Taskah. There they found a single company of Lumar under the command of a squad of Veetanho. The Veetanho were unable to motivate the Lumar to engage an entire company of modern CASPers with another company of light infantry in backup and were easily captured.

  Three days of light to moderate fighting, and Frost was in hand. The locals, who liked to call themselves Frosties, were proving extremely helpful in rounding up the occasional stray alien merc. Their defenders had fought to the last trying to hold the starport, and when they’d tried to surrender, the Veetanho had bombarded them from orbit. The Frosties weren’t too interested in negotiating with their invaders.

  Alexis okayed the plan of having the Copperheads and Espade Sangrenta set up as long-term defense. The aliens generously donated a considerable amount of weapons systems for that effort. All that left was the entropy-cursed shipyards.

  “Captain, do you have a second?”

  Alexis glanced up to see Abby Smith floating by the door to her ready room.

  “Sure, what can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you had a plan for the shipyards yet?” the younger woman asked.

  “I wish I did,” Alexis admitted. “We could just blow the shit out of them, but that doesn’t do us any real good.”

  Abby nodded and held up a slate. “I’ve been working with Flipper to gather data on the shipyards. The defenses are fairly elaborate.” She activated the Tri-V on her slate which projected a view of the two facilities orbiting a half million kilometers above Frost, enjoying an unnaturally strong LaGrange point created by Frost’s three moons. She’d included such details as the power plants, shield generators, and the one thing that had eluded Alexis, the garrison headquarters.

  “How did you find that?” Alexis asked, pointing at the marked garrison.

  Abby grinned shyly. “I used the navigational telescope and just watched.”

  “How long?”

  “Oh, about eight hours?” Alexis gawked. “I did it while I was off duty.”

  “Abby, you’re supposed to be resting in your off-duty time.”

  “It was pretty restful,” the young lady said, then lost a battle with a yawn.

  Alexis shook her head. She’d almost picked an older officer for SitCon when Glick went over to Lubieszów. Now she was glad she hadn’t. This young lady was brilliantly innovative, a trait Alexis highly valued in her command crew.

  “I hope you aren’t mad I did this by myself,” Abby said.

  “Mad? Abby, free thinking is one of the things you need as a Winged Hussar. There’s only one problem with you.”

  “Ma’am?” she asked nervously.

  “I’m going to have to give you your own ship sooner rather than later.” Abby blushed, making Alexis smile. “But for now, I’m impressed. I just need to see if I can put that data to good use.”

  “Oh, I thought of that already.” Alexis blinked in surprise again, and Abby’s blush renewed. The captain made a “go ahead” gesture, and Abby quickly initiated a preprogrammed routine. “The problem is we need the yards,” Abby said, and Alexis nodded. “So, we can’t just blow them up, obviously. We also can’t risk losing ships getting in close. Well, we know where the garrison is now, so if we can get in there, we can give Colonel Desmond a refined target, so he doesn’t have to fly around the structures getting shot up.”

  “Exactly,” Alexis said, eager to see what the woman had come up with.

  “Well, their defenses are pretty good, but not as good as Byczyna’s.”

  “Holy shit,” Alexis said, giving her forehead a little smack. “The damned battleship.”

  “I know,” Abby said and laughed. “They’re a change for us in so many ways.”

  Alexis sighed and berated herself for not thinking of it. The battleships had unbelievable shields. Pegasus sported four powerful 500/6 class multiphase shields, able to handle 3.5 terawatts of incoming fire on any individual facing. The damned battleship had 60 500/5 class multiphase shields. They couldn’t all overlap, of course, but still they could absorb 3 terawatts each, with a nominal overlap of 30 terawatts. They could take a hit from Pegasus’ main gun if they were expecting it.

  However, the shipyards didn’t have a fraction of that firepower. They could rain everything they had on Byczyna until entropy took the universe, and the big fucker would just smile and ask for more.

  “So, we just have Byczyna slide up to the space dock with Micky Finn in their boarding launches waiting. Once Byczyna is almost in contact with the space docks, Colonel Desmond swings around the battleship and hits his objectives.”

  “Slicker than a Flatar’s ass,” Alexis said. It was Abby’s turn to blink. “Inside joke,” Alexis said. “Abby, I’m putting a commendation in your permanent file. This was simply fantastic thinking on your part.”

  “I’m sure you would have come up with it,” Abby said shyly.

  “Maybe,” Alexis admitted, “but for now we were just sitting here twiddling our thumbs. Good job.”

  “Thanks, ma’am.”

  “Bring that plan to Paka and have Hoot let Captain Chigasoolu know to get that tub moving.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and saluted. Alexis would work to get her to stop doing that before long. It wasn’t really part of daily life on Pegasus, but Alexis knew a lot of other ship’s captains liked to see salutes. “Oh, one more thing?”

  “Yes,” Alexis said.

  Abby clicked the control on her slate, and the little Tri-V refocused on the shipyard. Four vessels were outlined. “These are nearly completed.”

  “Well, well, well,” Alexis said. In the shipyards’ zero-G cradles were four Houston-class cruisers, the first of their class. She grinned, because the Winged Hussars had designed those ships. Apparently, the aliens had continued building them, probably planning to use them against the Humans. Surprise, assholes! she thought. The worm has turned.

  * * *

  It took an hour to organize the operation, but a day to get Byczyna into place. The great Thrush-class battleship was many things, but fast wasn’t one of them. Thrusting at a steady one G was the best it could manage, and maneuvers around a planet’s huge gravity well needed to proceed with caution. It was difficult to take back a mistake when a ship had so little extra power.

  That slow plodding approach helped the rest of the ships involved in the operation take extra time to prepare. As Byczyna swung out of orbit around Frost and toward the shipyards, those in charge of the facility quickly realized they’d been undone. They unleashed everything they had at the battleship.

  Not having to fight asymmetrical attacks, the battleship went into coast mode and slowly began spinning. Its 60 shields were set into overlapped zones; in addition, dozens of anti-missile laser batteries either swatted missiles out of the sky or just soaked up the damage. By the time the shield generators on the side facing the shipyards started to fail, they were already orbiting away from the fire.

  Byczyna and the two available escort frigates, Glamdring and Cherry, approached the shipyards at a snail’s pace. Alexis watched from Frost orbit, with Pegasus far from the battle for a change. The tactics of this strange slow-paced space battle felt deeply wrong to Alexis. She’d led the way into battle countless times, and this time she was completely out of harm’s way.

  Ghost said to her.

  “That isn’t how a good commander works,” she replied. Ghost had nothing more to offer.

  As the slowly spinning battleship approached the shipyard, the defenders must have realized there was more to the Hussars�
�� tactics than just getting close enough to engage with pinpoint fire, as they’d been expecting. Instead the battleship was passing close aboard—so close their shields would brush. At that instant EMS Blarney Stone, escorted by Glamdring and Cherry, slid out from behind the battleship’s shields and through the shipyard’s.

  The battleship fed detailed sensor data to Alexis, enabling her to watch as Blarney Stone discharged a swarm of boarding pods, while the defensive modules on the shipyard tried to fire at the lightly defended merc cruiser. The two escort frigates added their shields to the merc cruiser’s own, and the three ships continued right through the middle of the shipyard, making them even harder targets. Since the attackers were now inside the shipyard’s defenses, the defenders now risked firing on their own personnel.

  A dizzying number of boarding pods flew in all directions, penetrating the shipyard’s facilities in dozens of places. As the three ships passed the far side of the shipyard and were at the most risk, the weapons fell silent as the defenders tried to repel the attackers.

  “Estimate Mikey Finn lost two boarding pods,” Flipper reported.

  “Noted,” Alexis said. Mickey Finn used a different type of pod than the Hussars employed that only carried three troopers each. While losing only two pods out of over two dozen was exceptional, it still meant six lives were snuffed out.

  Then came the waiting. Even the powerful sensors of Byczyna, supplemented by Ghost’s abilities, weren’t enough to give any details on the battle raging in the shipyards. Minutes slowly ticked by, as they always did when people were fighting and dying. Twenty-nine minutes had passed when Colonel Desmond’s voice came over the radio.

  “Micky Finn Actual to Pegasus.”

  “Pegasus Actual, go ahead Mickey Finn,” Alexis replied.

  “The shipyard was defended by a shit-ton of Goka,” he reported. “Just like Golara, only more of them. It’s going to take a week to get all the splattered cockroach out of this place, but the shipyards are now in our hands.”

  Alexis took a deep breath and let it out. “Thank you, Colonel. Excellent job.”

  Frost was theirs.

  * * *

  One Kilometer West of Manaus, Main Continent, Chislaa

  “There’s nowhere to run!” Corporal Enkh exclaimed.

  “We’re coming,” Sansar said. “Alpha Company, on me.” She turned toward where her system indicated Corporal Enkh’s position was. “Hold your fire, Corporal, until you have—”

  Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! A MAC began firing and was immediately joined by a second.

  “Blue Skies!” Sansar swore. She wished she could jump, but the confines of the jungle prevented it. The troopers weren’t far, though, and within seconds her system began picking up laser fire ahead of her.

  “Watch out!” she told her troops. “There are at least twenty HecSha in front of us, spread out in several groups. Jacobs, take your squad to the right; Staff Sergeant Enkh, take yours to the left. Second Platoon, we’ll hit them straight on. Follow me!”

  At least one of the MACs was still firing periodically, and she slowed as she approached the firefight. The CASPers were louder than the lasers the HecSha were armed with, and a group of six spun around, diverting their fire from her troopers. With a thought, her reticle snapped to the head of the one in front of her as her MAC came up, and she fired twice. The second round missed; there wasn’t enough head left for it to hit, and the extra round smacked into the tree behind the corpse.

  She popped open her laser shield as the group returned fire, mostly at her as she was in the lead, and the rest of the platoon finished the HecSha off. The platoon continued forward, and she could see where her troopers were, down in a small creek. It was only deep enough to submerge the CASPers to their waists, and both showed evidence being hit several times on their exposed portions.

  Sansar sent half her remaining troops to the left as she charged the group on the right. The HecSha turned toward her and repositioned themselves behind the trees for cover. Racing toward the group, Sansar fired several times at one, but the reptile was fast and jumped back behind the tree. They might have had a chance to hold Sansar off, but then Jacobs’ squad crashed into them from behind. An arm blade burst through the chest of the HecSha she had targeted, then Jacobs stepped out from behind the tree.

  “Clear here,” Jacobs announced, and Staff Sergeant Enkh reported the group on the left had been neutralized as well.

  “There should be one more group,” Sansar said, continuing forward. “We need to keep them from escaping!” She led them forward again, but the fourth group could not be found.

  “Got ’em!” Corporal Chase called. He sprinted off at a diagonal. “They’re running!”

  Sansar raced after the trooper, the rest of the company strung out behind her, but they weren’t able to make up any ground on the HecSha. The lizards were fast and agile, darting between the trees as they fled toward the city. Sansar had just caught up with Corporal Chase as they reached the edge of the forest. Beyond the tree line was a half-kilometer-wide open area and then the wall of the city.

  “No!” she yelled as Chase darted out into the open. Several defensive positions immediately opened up on him from the wall. He threw himself to the side, then rolled back to the cover of the trees as slugs and laser fire peppered the trees at the edge of the forest. The Horde troopers retreated farther into the forest. Sansar risked a last glance out at the city as the HecSha she’d been chasing made it to the wall and a door opened to let them in. She sighed—if the lizards didn’t know her forces were nearby before, they certainly did now. That was going to make things more difficult.

  She walked back to where the medic was tending to Corporal Enkh.

  “The private?” Sansar asked.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the medic, Sergeant Jonathan Wyatt, replied. “He was gone when I got to him. Took a laser through the head.”

  “Damn,” Sansar said. “How are you, Corporal?”

  “I’ll be fine, ma’am, although my CASPer will need some work. It’s hard to defend yourself when you’ve got lizards on every side.”

  “I’m sure. Can you tell me a little more about what the lizards were doing?”

  “All I can compare it to is a big game hunt, like they used to do back on Earth a long time ago. It looked like there were three groups driving the bugs toward the fourth group, and the fourth group looked like they were lined up to kill them all. I don’t know what the HecSha wanted the bugs for, but they wanted them dead.”

  “There’s a dead one over there,” Sergeant Wyatt reported, pointing. “I saw it on my way in.”

  Sansar walked over to the body and knelt next to it. Aside from the size and the fact that it was unarmed, the creature could have been a MinSha, like any of the ones she’d faced in battle. There was an uncanny resemblance. She shook her head. Parallel evolution was funny that way, sometimes.

  * * *

  Tunnels, Underdeep, Paradise

  Walker looked down the tunnel to its end, twenty meters away. There hadn’t been time to do more than make a hasty barricade at the mouth of the tunnel where it joined into a large cavern before their time had run out. The spot where the tunnel was supposed to connect to the one coming from Dixia Cheng had already become a spider web of cracks, and drill bits had punched through several times.

  It was even more ominous when the drilling stopped.

  “Why’d they stop?” Walker asked.

  “Probably because they’re about to dynamite it,” one of the locals said as he checked the laser pistol he’d brought. A former merc by the look of him, he’d probably come here to retire. Walker shook his head. Bad choice.

  Although dynamite hadn’t been used in a century, Walker knew what he meant as the term remained in use—the enemy was about to blow the last bit connecting their passages. He was even more familiar with the term now. In addition to dropping the roof on the enemy several times during their defensive fight, the locals had drilled some holes of their own�
��a lot of holes—into the ceiling in front of the rock wall where the Merc Guild was tunneling through. When they opened the breach, Walker intended to drop the roof again on the first troopers through it. People on the pointy end of the spear often had a short lifespan…and he intended to shorten it even further for them here.

  “What’s going to happen when they blow the wall?” Walker asked. Although he’d grown up on the planet, he’d never been allowed to go where they were actively mining, and his experience with underground blasting was limited to what they’d already done.

  The former merc shrugged. “Depends,” he said then spat on the rocky floor. “They’ve probably already looked through their drill holes and know where we are. I suspect they’ll try to shape the blast to target as much of the force and rock shrapnel our way.”

  “So, we should stay away from the mouth of the tunnel?” Walker asked.

  “I would.”

  Everyone cleared the mouth of the tunnel.

  “No need to be there anyway,” the man said. “Once they blow it, they’ll have to move the debris out of the way and we’ll be able to shoot them while they’re doing it.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done this before,” Walker said.

  The man nodded. “Once or twice.” He chuckled. “It was a lot more fun doing it in a CASPer, though. Don’t suppose you want to trade?” He tapped his armor. “I’ll give you my armor and rifle for your suit.”

  “Thanks,” Walker said, “but I think I’ll hold onto it for now.”

  “Didn’t hurt to ask,” the man replied. “I just—”

  The wall detonated down the passageway. Even from their position around the corner, Walker could feel the concussion through his CASPer and was happy to be inside the suit. He rounded the corner to begin shooting at the rubble movers but stopped, and his jaw dropped.

  “Fire!” he yelled as he brought up his MAC. There wouldn’t be time to shoot at the rubble movers, after all; there wouldn’t be any. The enemy troopers poured through the holes they’d created, not waiting to clear the passage. He saw the wires from their own explosives dangling from the ceiling—they’d obviously been cut by shrapnel from the blast—and he knew they’d never be able to stop all the Goka pouring through the breach in time.