Inherited War 3: Retaliation (46 page)

“Thanks, brother,” he said to Cole and Cole returned the hug. Cole turned and left the room. Sky was outside with a squad of soldiers. Cole raised an eyebrow at the heavily armed squad.

“I wasn’t taking any chances,” she replied to the unasked question. Cole laughed quietly and wrapped her up in his own bear hug.

“I think he will be okay,” he told her. “Feed him and check him over, then leave him alone. I gave him two days to figure things out.”

“Yes Sir.” She responded and picked up a large covered tray from the floor. She held it in both hands and backed through the door giving Cole a wink and a smile before she disappeared into Jeth’s room.

The next day found Cole sitting quietly in the command center. He was quiet while everyone else was busy making the noise that one found in any large room full of people. The shield strength was down under fifteen percent and falling fast. He didn’t know where they had gotten all of the nukes, but they had been steadily dropping them for a while now. The winds were still blowing from the north, moving the radiation cloud to the south. No one would live on this patch of ground for decades to come—if anyone survived this at all.

“What happens if the shield gets taken out by weapons fire?” Cole asked.

“It shorts the whole system, fries most of the panels, and renders it useless,” one of the Nixa in the room answered. Cole thought on this for a while. He didn’t know if totally losing the shields was important or not. He just hated to waste an asset.

“When the strength hits ten percent, drop the shield just before the next nuke hits.” He gave the order to the shield technician.

“What? Won’t that destroy the city?” he said, flabbergasted.

“Yes, I suppose so. But it will also make the one way left into this underground city very hot and very radioactive. It buys us more time.” One of the Nixa commanders opened his mouth to object.

“Obey orders or get out.” The deep baritone sounded from behind Cole.

“Thanks Jeth, and welcome,” Cole said as the color drained from the Nixa and he turned to man his station.

“No, I owe you thanks and my life. Though I will struggle with this for a long, long time, you have given me the tools to cope with it. For now I will fight.” With that, he took his customary position away from the commotion and leaned against a far wall to observe.

Cole watched as another nuke fell from the sky and impacted on the top of the shield. The strength dropped to eleven percent.

“That’s close enough. Once the next one is visible, drop the shield.” All motion and talking suddenly ceased, and all eyes turned to the radar and shield monitors. The massive mushroom cloud slowly finished its ascent to the heavens and began to collapse, helped along by the strong southerly winds. They waited. An hour passed before the next one appeared on the radar.

“Wait for it. We don’t want to give them time to turn it off. We want it to blow.” Mere seconds from its target, the shield turned off and then the bomb exploded. The ground shook, even as far down as the underground city. All traces of the city were obliterated from the face of Nixa.  The once great capitol of an ancient people had been turned to radioactive dust, and was being blown south.

That was it, their last line of defense from the surface. Now they would be defending the tunnels. It was going to be cramped and hot, and there were only a few halls currently open to the enemy. The Roche would suffer if they came down, badly. Even if they attempted to bore down another tunnel, it would take months. The Nixa city was inside the bedrock and had hundreds of feet of that rock above it. Anything that bought them time would be a boon, but Cole wasn’t counting on it. He knew the Esii too well; they would push the Roche down the elevator shaft as fast as they could. They would clog the tunnels with dead until they achieved their goal. The question was, could they kill the Roche fast enough? Cole didn’t think so. Every pile of dead bodies created, was a new position to hide behind. Cole’s goal was to make them take as long as possible, to push them out of the city.

Time. That was the key. The more he bought, the better chance of the fleet showing up. Cole was shaken from his reprieve by the silence that hung in the room. There were no more orders to give, plans to make. The final defense was at hand, and everyone knew their jobs and were already in position. Cole looked around the room and into the eyes of each and every being there.

“Go to your units and fight with honor.” There would be no honor in this last stand. This city was about to become an abattoir—meat comes in, gets processed, and stacked. Nothing more or less. Cole turned to Jeth.

“Do I need to ask?” Jeth said.

“Of course not, we are at the Van as always,” Cole said as he activated his heavy-duty combat suit. Solid yet flexible plates added extra protection along with the suit underneath. Jeth let out a heavy sigh.

“Look at it this way, we might die first and not have to spend days fighting in this hell hole.”

“Promises, promises,” Jeth muttered in his deep voice and turned to follow Cole out of the room and down the hall to the first line of defense. It was just down the hallway from the elevator that used to go up to the main governmental building up top. The elevator opened into a large entry room with three hallways leading away. One to the right, one left, and one right in front of the elevator doors. About thirty feet separated each hallway from the elevator and gave the defenders the best cover available.

Cole had Nixa engineers weld thick plates of carbon steel to the floor in the middle tunnel that faced the elevator to give the men fighting there cover. Cole and two other Nixa were behind one while Jeth’s bulk took up the space behind the other. There were auto turrets everywhere. They were attached to the ceiling, floors, and walls. They were all trained on the elevator doors. They would do the bulk of the killing at first since they couldn’t bring more than a few troops up to fire. Cole wasn’t chancing friendly fire by allowing them to try and shoot around each other from behind. Once the Roche pushed through here and made it to the city proper, that’s when the bulk of the Nixa would join the fight and hold every intersection, T-junction, and doorway in the city.

There were two points of retreat. The Nixa would control the avenues of retreat so they could escape to the other cities if necessary. Two tunnels leading to other cities had been collapsed leaving the one furthest from the elevators as the only underground retreat. The second was one of the passageways that led to a secret entrance on the surface. That was to only be used if a force was separated from the main defense and had absolutely no way of linking back up. Cole hoped no one had to use it because they had no idea what was on the other side of the door.

Now here they sat. Cole rested his back on the welded plate of steel separating him from the inevitable entry point of the invaders and was actually nodding off. They had no idea how much damage the shaft had taken when the nuke had destroyed the city, so they could only wait for the signs of Roche coming down. Cole decided to have the doors to the elevator opened so they might get some warning of the invaders, and that decision paid off. The only warning they received was sudden shower of rocks and dirt that rained down from above. They may not have noticed it if the doors had been closed.

“Turn the turrets on. Here they come,” he said over the all hands net. He wanted everyone to know that it had started. He turned and knelt on one knee and leaned out around the edge of the steel plate. The two Nixa with him crouched and aimed over the top. There was a line of Nixa kneeling next to the wall, ready to move wounded or up to the firing line. Both would happen simultaneously. “Send them to hell, boys,” Cole said as the first feet appeared in the elevator shaft. The world exploded in fire.

CHAPTER 24

They had lost contact with the spheres cleaning the space around the planet within hours of their launch. The tunnel they had cleaned through the dust cloud to get to the planet had slowly collapsed until their sensors were rendered useless. It had been five days and by the spheres programming, they should be forming up right now into their circular pattern at about a mile in diameter. They would bore a new hole out to the fleet, widen even further, and led them back in. With as slowly as the last tunnel had collapsed, this new one would be more than enough to get the fleet to the planet.

The fleet would have to enter a very low orbit for a while to give the spheres the room they needed to work, but on the bright side, the spheres could be controlled from this point on, which should make them more efficient. Captain Glendale had given the standby order and the fleet had formed up in pairs stretching back into the night. All captains were at their helms and awaiting the orders to move out. They just had to wait for the spheres to come back.

“Sir, something’s coming through,” a sensor tech called out and all eyes went to the forward screens. One hundred bright shiny spheres flew out from the radiation area and stopped short of the fleet. Hanging motionless before them for a moment before expanding their diameter to a mile and a half. Any stray radiation they missed would be easily handled by the ships shields. Split sent the spheres racing back to the planet. That was Glendale’s queue to advance.

“All ships ahead,” he said over the com system. As one, every ship went from being motionless to moving forward at the same speed. The spheres moved slightly faster than the fleet but never got out of visual range. Split had taken them over once they had reestablished a connection to their flight controls. It took them almost an hour to reach the planet, and Split was pleasantly surprised. The spheres were ahead of schedule. In fact, they didn’t even need to enter a low orbit. They could back off the planet and the shield surrounding it. That was the other good news; the shield was up and protecting the world. Nobody had been sure they had gotten the shield up in time. The fleet had left in advance of the sun’s destruction and hadn’t gotten anything on their readings to indicate that the shield had been deployed.

Split sent the new information to Glendale and he adjusted his plan accordingly. The columns of ships split apart when they reached the rally point next to the planet. Both columns peeled off and circled around the world.

“All ships,” Glendale paused to make sure everyone was reading him. “Move to assigned areas and take up ready position. As soon as the shield falls, target Roche and Esii positions and engage. Do not wait for orders. If targets are mixed with locals, delay until clear. Common sense and good friend/foe targeting are the watchwords of the day. Glendale out.” He turned to Split.

“Now old chap, how the hell do we let them know we are here and ready?” the Captain asked.

“Not ready, not yet. The cleared space has to be pushed back further. We alone cannot win this war, and our allies need a much bigger parking space.” Split hadn’t told anyone about the dwarves of the hidden planet, no point really, until they knew this plan would work. “For now we just orbit and watch.”
The Justice
and
The Missouri
both took up a parking orbit above the capitol city. The shield made it nearly impossible to get a reliable reading from sensors, so they switched to what they could physically see. Not much. The shield around the planet had a slight blue tint and blurred the planet below making visual contact with the planet moot. It didn’t stop the bright flashes that were the nukes the Roche were using.

“Mother Mary of Christ, what the hell was that?” Glendale said when the bright flash of a nuclear warhead detonated where the city was supposed to be.

“That big and bright, thermo nuclear weapon.” Split took a guess. “They are very good at bringing shields down fast if you don’t mind collateral damage.”

“I hope no one is still in that area. They won’t last long against one of those,” Glendale muttered.

“They wouldn’t be doing it if no one was there,” Split pointed out.

“Brother, I need you.”
Split called out to his bond mate.

“I am here, where else would I be?”
he answered.

“I need you to do that which you do not like to do.”

“You wish me to travel to the planet and find Cole?”

“Yes, we need to coordinate this attack and find out how much longer they can hold out.”

“The distance is too far. I have never gone that far before.”
he said to his brother.

“It is possible, try. This is almost over.”
he said.

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Yes, you have my word.”
he answered and felt the presence that shared the body with him suddenly leave. Split knew how much his brother hated to leave the body, but this was necessary. Split fiddled with the spheres a bit and boosted their power levels slightly; he pushed them to their limits and hoped their power cores held out long enough. It was a gamble, but one he felt he had to take. He had an uneasy feeling about what was going on down on the planet and a crazy itch was telling him to move faster. Interestingly, he automatically slipped back into the singular person without thinking. It was nice to think in terms of “I” and “me” for a while.