Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) (31 page)

The Kirosha returned fire at two hundred yards, able for the first time to unleash their full fury without enduring terrible casualties. Tank cannon roared, along with rifle, machinegun, rocket and lesser artillery volleys. The area force field protecting Timothy’s trench became visible as it contained the flames and smoke of multiple explosions and bullet impacts.

And failed, when three duplex cannon rounds struck in rapid succession. Jets of plasma burst through the shields and struck the line.

One of Timothy’s men had been peering over the lip of the trench and its own portable force field. His head vanished in flash of superheated tissue and bone. Something sharp stabbed Timothy’s right biceps. He looked down and saw blood running down his sleeve; a piece of the dead man had torn into him. The pain was nothing compared to the sight of the headless body and the three severely wounded men next to the corpse. They had borne the brunt of the explosion as their fellow was turned into a bomb.

“Corpsman!” Timothy shouted. A group of younger Kirosha came running through the connecting trench and hauled the bodies away. As they did, a few of the men cast glances at the zigzagging trench leading towards the rear and safety.

“Nobody run!” he yelled at them. “There is nowhere to run!”

They held, for now. But the tanks were getting closer, and more blasts were getting through; the enemy had saved all their special shells for this moment. Most of the plasma jets struck nothing but empty air, or buried themselves into the ground in front of the trench line, but others hit just right, sending sandbags and pieces of bodies flying in the air. One of the Vehelian lasers blew up a tank, then another. But there were at least six or seven more just in the first wave, and reinforcements were coming.

Timothy kept firing. “Pour it on!” he shouted. “Send out enough bullets and some will get through!”

It was a lie, a cruel lie, but if he kept them shooting they might not run. His men screeched in defiance and followed his lead, and he felt a burst of savage pride coursing through him.

They would make their stand, come what may.

* * *

The Wyrm portable cannon delivered bursts of unstable space-time at a cyclic rate of three hundred pulses per minute. Whatever they touched was hit with enormous kinetic force, and worse, was twisted from the inside out. Unarmored Kirosha were torn apart, or turned into grotesque meat sculptures, some of which lived on for several seconds. Vehicles broke apart and exploded. Fromm and the other gunners in the two squads turned a city block into a hellish nightmare of burning hulks and mutilated corpses.

The field generator was somewhere up ahead, and a good portion of a Royal Guard tank regiment stood in their way.

“Forward!”

Two undersized squads, thirteen men, stood up and walked down the street in a line formation. Against a foe equipped with modern weapons, the order would have been nothing but suicide. With their enhanced shields, and facing an opponent armed with primitive slug-throwers, it was merely insanely risky.

The men followed him, firing from the hip, spraying grav beams, coherent light and plasma with inhuman accuracy as they walked forward. At first, the enemy was too stunned by the surprise attack to react, and they were packed too tightly to maneuver. They had concentrated within the shelter of the force field, planning to deploy once they got close enough to the trench line to take it under fire. That doomed them. Tanks and personnel carriers melted and blew apart. Men were mowed down by the dozen before they understood what was happening. The elite of the Kirosha armed forces, lavishly trained and equipped, melted under the withering firestorm.

Thirteen men, even as heavily armed as they were, could not keep that volume of fire for long, however. As power packs and magazines ran dry and had to be replaced, their onslaught lessened in intensity. Different weapon types had varying sustained-fire times, so the shooting never stopped, but more and more Kirosha down the line lived long enough to realize a pack of killers was behind them, and reacted accordingly. More enemy troops engaged them from the flanks, where only a single Marine faced them.

Bullets lashed at the two squads as they kept walking in the open. Even heavy machinegun rounds bounced off their personal shields, although the kinetic bleed-through of multiple rounds started to push them back. They leaned forward, as if against a heavy rain, and kept advancing, kept pouring it on. One of their LML troopers sent three area-effect rockets down range and immolated a dozen vehicles, scattering blazing debris everywhere.

A Kirosha tank round fired from further back struck the assaultman a moment later.

It was pure bad luck; Ruddy tanks didn’t have the accuracy to reliably hit a human-sized target even under ideal conditions, let alone shooting through the firestorm between them and the advancing Marines. For Private Second Class Lawrence Calvert, it was the worst kind of luck. The high-explosive anti-tank round detonated against his enhanced shields, punched through them and the body armor underneath, and turned him into scattered gobbets of flesh and bone. His remaining missiles hadn’t been armed, so they merely became pieces of flying metal that peppered the Marines on either side instead of exploding, which saved the squad from instant destruction. The line’s advance faltered nonetheless, men going down on one knee while they shot back, in a futile attempt to make themselves a smaller target.

“Keep moving!” Fromm shouted into the command channel. “March or die! Home is that way!”

The survivors stood up and followed him forward, trading no-deflection shots with the Kirosha, who stood and fought with desperate courage Fromm could appreciate. An anti-tank rocket sent a Marine flying back. A heavy machinegun hammered at another one until his shields failed; the follow-up bursts blew dime-sized holes through both sides of his clamshell armor. Icons went black or purple. Thirteen became ten, became eight.

His imp finally gave him the target he’d been seeking. The generator and its power plant had been mounted on a tank chassis. The vehicle had kept moving as Fromm’s troops emerged from warp, and was now a hundred and fifty feet ahead of him. Behind him and his remaining seven men, the other two squads in the task force were slowly falling back while engaging the Kirosha at their rear.

Several rocket-propelled grenades and tank rounds emerged from the smoke and flames as Fromm designated the target for his platoon. One more icon turned black, but everyone still on their feet cut loose with everything they had.

The generator had its own shield. It stood up against the stream of plasma and missile fire for several seconds before finally failing. Long enough more incoming to lash back at the few Marines still on their feet.

The ground rose up beneath Fromm’s feet as fire and sound enveloped him.

Darkness.

* * *

Russell and his team were further back, playing leapfrog with the ET formations coming up from the rear while the skipper and his crew tried to blow up the field generator. It’d been going pretty well, all things considered. Most Ruddies were too far back to hit them without having to go through their own force field, and the ones who made it past the field’s perimeter were coming in dribs and drabs, easy meat for the two squads as they fired from cover and retreated the slow and steady way.

The mad bastards with the skipper stood up and walked down the street like this was some sort of sim-drama about the Old West. Even for devil dogs, that was on the crazy side of macho. It worked, though. Russell knew it worked because of the hellacious blast that reached out and touched his fire team, nearly overloading their shields, and letting enough momentum through to knock them all down.

It was a big one. Multi-tons of TNT big. Russell glanced back and saw a mushroom cloud rising up. Not a very big one as those things went, granted, but still.

“The fuck?” Gonzo shouted.

“Power plant done blow up, is my guess.”

“Good. Time to go home.”

Easier said than done, of course. With the force field gone, the mortars could provide covering fire, though. Even better, the Ruddies seemed to take the loss of their shield and the Guard regiment inside pretty badly. They sure as hell weren’t pushing as hard as they had been a moment before. The two squads were even able to sling several casualties over their shoulders as they retreated back to the lines. All the Marines near the blast were down, several of them missing limbs; the force fields gave you the most protection to the torso and head, the bits you needed to stay alive long enough for med-techs to regrow the other bits. In other words, all five survivors they found were basket cases, except for the skipper, who’d only lost two legs at the knees and half of one arm. Russell ended up carrying him on his back as they evaded and escaped toward Embassy Row.

It was no picnic. Plenty of Ruddies were still alive on their flanks and rear. The task force survivors took fire from three directions as they made their way toward the crater where the field generator and its juice box had gone up. The bullets still felt like raindrops when they hit Russell’s shields, but it was a fucking downpour now. A couple rockets flew past him as he ran, and he almost dropped the skipper so he could move faster. Almost. Too many of his buds were around to get away with that kind of Bravo-Foxtrot shit.

He dived into the crater and let the captain drop so he could lean out and return fire. His laser gun was kicking ass: he used a sustained beam to slice-and-dice a tank and a platoon of grunts huddling behind it. The turret slid off from the main body before the whole thing brewed up, and the Ruddies further back actually turned tail and ran when they saw what happened to their buddies. Russell sent a couple grenades their way to keep them running. That left him with three; hopefully he wouldn’t need more than that.

The mortars dropped a hefty dose of hellfire all around them, and it was danger-close time; some of it was landing a bit too near the crater for comfort. Corporal Petrossian, the highest-ranking grunt still standing, managed to raise Staff Sergeant Martin and got him to shift the barrage away from their position. The good news was that the Ruddies between them and Embassy Row had been mostly wiped out by the power plant explosion, and the few survivors hadn’t lasted much long after that. It looked like they might actually live through this.

They poured it on. Every Ruddy tank in range ate laser burst or an AP missile. Russel burned off the last of the laser’s power packs and switched to his pistols, pew-pewing ETs with 3mm plasma bullets that didn’t have an Iwo’s punch but were still plenty good enough to maim and kill. The hundred-mike-mikes walked their fire back and forth all over the area, and the relentless sweeping-broom explosions did the trick. The Ruddies broke under the steady pounding. They didn’t retreat or even run; they routed, many of them throwing down their weapons as they fled.

“Guess they’re learning,” Gonzo said.

“Learning what?”

“That fucking with the Corps ain’t ever a good idea.”

Year 163 AFC, D Plus Twenty-Nine

Rockwell handled the negotiations while Heather and Deputy Norbert listened through their imps.

“Yes, Grand Marshall,” Rockwell said, agreeing to yet another armistice so the Kirosha could bring back their dead. There were plenty of those. The attack had been pressed to the hilt, and losses had been brutal on both sides. Every makeshift unit defending the legation buildings had taken severe loses.

A soldier jumped into the trench; Heather barely deflected his bayonet thrust with her Iwo and countered with a kick to the balls and a brutal blow with the gun’s butt that broke the alien’s jaw and spun him to the ground, where a point-blank burst finished him off. A volley of plasma rounds washed over the lip of the trench, obliterating the last attackers, and she rushed back to the top to shoot at their retreating backs…

She shook her head, vanishing the day-old memories, knowing they would come back in nightmares and flashbacks. It’d been bad, at the end; her sector had been nearly overrun until the massive explosion marking the destruction of their force field broke the Kirosha’s spirit once and for all.

Their losses had been the worst yet. They included Locquar and many of his clansmen. The warriors had stood their ground even after their trench line was hit by multiple duplex rounds. The line had held, but Locquar hadn’t lived through the brutal fight.

I will see to your family
, she promised her dead driver. If they survived this, all the clansmen would be taken care of. She would make sure of it.

It had been bad, almost as bad as what Peter Fromm and his men had endured. Fifteen Marines had come back, seven of them as mutilated near-corpses. Two of those had died despite the medics’ best efforts, leaving a total of thirteen lucky survivors.

Peter was still in a coma, but was expected to recover, even though his missing limbs couldn’t be regrown until he was taken to a proper medical facility. The local clinics and field hospitals no longer had the supplies for that kind of procedure; just keeping the wounded alive was challenging enough.

“Forty-eight hours will be fine,” Rockwell went on. He had demanded to speak directly with the Grand Marshall, and after some wrangling he had gotten his way. “After that period is over, we will resume our attack on the Kingdom,” Rockwell said.

“I do not understand. You will attack us?”

“Now that our warp catapult is fully operational, we will start launching raids behind your lines. Starting with the palace and the Great Pyramid. I suggest you use the armistice to evacuate civilians and perhaps remove any irreplaceable works of art in those facilities. We intend to demolish both buildings and kill everyone found inside them.”

“I do not believe you have the capability to conduct such an assault.”

“You might want to ask your newfound allies about our capabilities. Humans are known throughout the galaxy as the Demons from Warp-Space. I prefer that term to ‘Star Devils,’ to be honest. It took some time to build the device, but now we have the capability to strike anywhere in the Kingdom. Destroying the Palace Complex will be a largely symbolic gesture, of course. Of more importance will be the follow-up attacks on your logistical installations, both around your capital and on other fronts.”

“I do not believe you.”

“You may believe we are serious when we strike, say, the Southern Provinces, which if I recall are still poorly pacified. Or when we put your factories and grain silos to the torch. We have cut our rations by a quarter, to ensure we may endure a year’s siege. It is only fair that your subjects also know the joys of scarcity. How many targets lie within our reach, Grand Marshall? More than you can protect, I wager.”

“You think to win by fear what you cannot through the strength of your arms.”

“Perhaps. You will discover the truth after the armistice is over. Or we can talk about peace instead.”

“I can only discuss lesser arrangements like the one we just agreed upon. I cannot even accept your surrender, merely present it to Her Supreme Majesty for her approval.”

“Then I suggest you present our promises to her. Let her know that we will embrace death rather than the dishonor of surrender. Let her know that even if your allies appear in this star system, they will not be able to spare your kingdom from our vengeance, for we will spend every last ounce of our strength making sure nothing remains of Kirosha except for a charred carcass to be picked clean by its many enemies. Tell her those things, Grand Marshall, or she will learn of them in a more direct fashion.”

“I believe this palaver is over,” Seeu Teenu said. The connection went dead.

“Think I laid it on too thick?” Rockwell asked the room.

“I think if we’re going to win this through words, those were the right ones,” Heather said.

“Big if,” Deputy Norbert said. “If it comes down to it, could we carry out those threats? Any of them?”

“According to Sergeant Tanaka and his gang of experts, the catapult is good for two, maybe three more drops. They would have a maximum range of fifty miles or so, and they would be nearly random, even with the Wyrm targeting system. We can’t foment rebellion down south. We can send a couple of teams out to raise hell within a couple days’ walk of the Enclave. They’d be certain suicide missions, of course. Nobody is going to walk fifty miles back here. Or back from the Great Pyramid, for that matter.”

“Not necessarily,” LC Zhang said. “We have enough stealth suits to outfit a squad. We could drop in, plant some bombs and sneak out. That might be enough to convince them we mean business.”

“Risky,” Rockwell said. “Stealth suits don’t have force fields, and no exoskeletons. The squad wouldn’t survive any sort of firefight.”

“I never said it was a good plan, Mr. Rockwell. Just a slightly less suicidal one”

“True. And it is doable,” Rockwell said. “Do you think you could scare up enough volunteers?”

“You can count me in,” Heather said.

“I think every warp-rated marine would step up. They aren’t happy about what the Ruddies did to their skipper.”

“Very well. Draft a plan, Commander. Hopefully we won’t have to put it into effect.”

Heather nodded in agreement. Taking the initiative was better than waiting for the rat bastards on the other side to come up with something. Even if it meant going on a one-way trip.

It’s the least I can do. Peter did. He even managed to come back, most of him at least
.

If she had to go, Heather hoped he’d wake up soon, so she could say goodbye before leaving.

* * *

“They are lying,” the Lamprey said. His hunched posture seemed furtive, but that was the way the Star Devil always looked. The creature was too different for Magistrate Eereen to discern his true feelings.

“You were wrong before,” Grand Marshall Seeu said, in the same tones he would use to pass a death sentence. “You never warned us the Star Devils could appear behind our lines much like your ships jump through the void between the stars. They slaughtered one of our most elite units. Two dozen destroyed three thousand of our best soldiers, and they managed to fight their way back to the Enclave. Another ten thousand died in the general attack, including. We don’t have enough troops to endure these losses. We have squandered our best forces, for negligible results.’

“They shouldn’t have a warp catapult. Such things are used only at the battalion level. A mere platoon could never be expected…”

Seeu cut him off with curt hand gesture. “And yet they did. If they could use it once, they can do so again.”

“If they could send more than twenty or thirty troops at once, they would have. And they transported them less than a mile away. Any further, and they would be trapped far behind your lines. They would never make it back.”

“And how much damage would they inflict, before we ran them down? I cannot send regiments to stand watch over every possible target. There aren’t enough troops to face an enemy that can appear anywhere, at any time. How do your people fight such foes?”

“There are ways to prevent warp emergences from taking place,” the Lamprey said.

“Can you provide them for us?”

“No.”

“That is not an answer to gladden my heart,” the Grand Marshall said. “Very well. I will present my recommendations to the Queen tomorrow. I must take my leave of you. There is much work to be done.” With those blunt words, the military commander left the room.

Magister Eereen took his leave himself, having no desire to spend any more time in the company of the alien. He did not get any rest that night, however. Worry made it impossible to sleep. The losses incurred in the last attack had been beyond atrocious. Half the Royal Guards had been killed or wounded since the war began. First Army was no more, its survivors a collection of broken battalions fit only for garrison duty. More units were arriving, but they were filled with barely-trained conscripts. Most of the incoming infantry regiments were equipped with bolt-action rifles and a handful of water-cooled machineguns; they would be only marginally more useful than the sword-wielding peasant militias, which had themselves taken devastating losses in the ill-fated attacks.

The Kingdom had bankrupted itself fighting the war, and all it had accomplished was the destruction of its modern forces.

Seeu would not survive the Queen’s displeasure. After the Grand Marshall was gone, the only likely course of action would be to conduct a siege and starve out the Star Devils. But what if they could indeed send their troops across vast distances in the blink of an eye? The Kingdom was already reeling; it would not take much more before a general revolt destroyed the very fabric of the realm. All this death and destruction – and over what? Fear of the change the outsiders were bringing to the Kingdom? Looking back on his own actions, Eereen faced the realization that he might have caused irreparable damage to the very traditions and culture he had been trying to protect.

He did not sleep at all that night.

The next morning, the weary magistrate abased himself in front of the Queen, along with the assembled courtiers. No military officers were present other than the Grand Marshall and the captain of the Royal Guard detachment, a gaunt officer Eereen did not recognize. After the failures of the past weeks, the sight of military uniforms had become displeasing to Her Supreme Majesty.

“What say you, Seeu Teenu?” the Queen spoke after the courtly rituals had been followed. The omission of the soldier’s title did not go unnoticed, and the courtiers nearer the Grand Marshall subtly moved away from him, lest his disgrace prove to be contagious.

“I say that continuing the war against the Foreigner’s Enclave is no longer an advisable course of action – if it ever was.”

Courtiers gasped and fanned themselves in shock at the insult to the Queen.

“You dare question our decision?”

Eereen had never seen the Queen look so angry. Seeu would likely be nailed to a table and bled to death right in front of the court.

“If defeat in battle is certain, then one must not fight, even if the Queen wishes otherwise,” Seeu Teenu said.

“The only certain thing is your death, for defying your Queen!”

“I think not.”

The Guardsmen in the Audience Room leveled their rifles – towards the throne and the assembled courtiers.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“I anticipated this moment, and replaced the Guards with my men. Perhaps you would have done better had you paid enough attention to your servants to recognize their faces. You might have realized that the new captain of the guard is Colonel Neen, formerly of First Army and a true servant of Kirosha.”

The Queen gasped, clearly at a loss for words. Eereen looked around for a way out, and saw more Guards – or rather, more Army men in Guard uniforms – enter the audience chamber, blocking all exits. False Guard Captain Neen blinked pure hatred towards the Queen and the assembled courtiers and magistrates before him. His men looked equally resolute.

The Marshall had been truly busy last night.

Eeren’s legs grew rubbery, and he swayed on his feet. He refused to believe his fortune could collapse so swiftly and completely. He had put thousands to death with a stroke of a pen and without giving the matter a second thought. That he might one day share their fate had never seriously occurred to him, not with the visceral understanding that overwhelmed him at this moment.

“If a ruler would lead her people to slaughter and defeat, that ruler must fall. That too is Ka’at,” Seeu Teenu told the Queen before turning to his men and making a curt gesture.

Twenty rifles went off in unison.

Year 163 AFC, D Plus Thirty-Three

Fromm opened his eyes.

Heather was sitting next to his bed; she smiled at him.

“Awake at last,” she said. “Took you long enough.”

“How long?”

“About five days. Five eventful days.”

“I could query my imp, but I have a headache and I really don’t want to check my messages yet. Will you brief me on what I missed?”

“Straight to business, eh? I can appreciate that. We have an extended cease-fire in place. There’s been a major political realignment in the Kingdom. The Queen’s dead, and her only surviving son – the other three all suffered unfortunate accidents on the same day Her Supreme Majesty died – has been designated as the Heir Apparent, under the regency of former High Marshall Seeu Teenu. The Regent has repudiated the Queen’s decision to attack the Enclave, and claims she fell prey to bad advice from the Preserver faction and their ‘pet monster from beyond the stars.’ He shipped us the head of said monster, inside a gift-wrapped box, by the way. A sign of good will, he said. It was indeed a Lamprey. Hard to tell what killed him, with just the head to autopsy, but my guess is he was hacked apart with assorted chopping implements.”