Osdal (Harmony War Series Book 3) (29 page)

Tal got his upper arm in the printer and the heads got to work, making him a new forearm, wrist and hand. It hurt where they were testing out the nerves and muscle to check for where the printer would graft on the new limb. Jerome lay on the ground, knowing that it would hurt like a bastard when it was connected. The printer worked fast, and it would only be ten or twenty minutes until he had his lost limb back.

“Plan is we’re going to get suited up, grab Moretti, Zukic and Dominguez, then we’re headed to Mining City Twenty-One. Seems like there’s a little rebellion going on there that we can help out with,” Haas said in everyone’s implants.

“The fleet is in bound, they should be in orbit within four hours,” Yu said.

So we just need to hold out for four more hours, that’s not too difficult,
Jerome said, knowing that he was lying to himself.

Chapter 43

EMFC Reclaimer

Osdal Actual, Osdal System

8/3267

Alexis checked her armor one last time before tucking her arms into her ammo pack.

Her sections were pulling themselves together. They were all armed, armored and running final checks. She moved her helmet, getting her hair caught in the locks was a bitch.

She was clear and her helmet was sealed.

“Two, four section, let’s move,” Alexis said, walking past them, and the sections fell in. Even the new people were looking good. She just hoped that it carried over on the ground.

They passed through the airlock, the flight deck was still closed and pressurized.

Alexis moved into a jog, the sections following her. Second Lieutenant Che already had one and three section on board their shuttle.

Everyone filed into their spots, taking their seats and locking in their harnesses. It might be four hours until the ships were in orbit, then it would take the Combat Shuttles two to get to the planet, and they didn’t need to slow down too much before their landing.

Half of the fleet Actual were headed for the stations; the others were going to the ground.

Fleet Three, which was made up of only two carriers, was already entering Osdal Three’s orbit. There was fierce fighting on the ground, but Alexis expected nothing less.

The carriers had pounded the ground before they sent down their Combat Shuttles, and Alexis just hoped that it had given the Troopers the cover they needed to close with the Chosen.

“We’ve got reports of powered armor battalions mobilizing, and we’re going right into the thick of it, so remember your Vibra-Blades and hammer the fuckers,” Major Ortiz said over the main command channel.

“Ten minutes until deployment,” Force Sergeant Major Nerva said, calm as ever. Alexis knew that he was going to be on the ground with them. He was the only person ranked above Major on the ground. She also knew that nothing less than being knocked unconscious would get him away from the front lines. It was reassuring to have Ice Man going out with them.

Alexis remembered the video that had been circulating when she had been pulled out of cryo a few days ago.

There was no mistaking the man in the video as anyone other than Mark.

Her hands tightened on her harness, her eyes bleak.

She hoped Mark was still alive, but it didn’t seem possible. She had a job to do, kill Harmony, and she would do everything in her power to complete that mission.

***

Nerva looked over his HUD which showed the entire force under his command, ten thousand men and women, all waiting. None of them were really ready to close with the enemy, that was a lie every soldier told themselves before a battle.

They were as ready and well trained as they could expect. That was all that Nerva could hope for as he settled into his harness, checking the feeds of the Combat Shuttle.

“Depressurizing!” Flight Control said, and the lights went off to warn crews and personnel. People left, others ran final checks on Combat Shuttles.

The last stragglers got into their Combat Shuttles as cargo ramps started closing.

Finally, the air was sucked out, and in the eerie silence all around, Nerva could only hear his own movement in his smart clothes and the cargo master’s footsteps through the cargo bay’s decking.

The lights changed color and the armored doors opened, showing the star-speckled skies of space.

There were four other carriers out there in that darkness, but they were hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, too far to be seen without magnification. Nerva could see them on a section of his HUD that relayed the fleet’s positions.

Light from outside of the carrier illuminated the flight deck. Nerva knew that the carrier was firing, but there was no noise to accompany the weapon’s fire.

“Launching,” the pilot said, and the first line of Combat Shuttles rose as one, pushing forward out of the carrier. They angled away, getting clear of the carrier and heading past the rear.

The carrier’s engines were at full burn to slow it down before it reached Osdal Actual, but the Combat Shuttles didn’t need to slow down that much. They formed up into their pyramid and diamond fighting formations.

Nerva changed sensors; he could see Reclaimer’s relatively small Close In Weapons Systems or Seawhizz firing streams of tracers ahead of the Combat Shuttles, shifting their fire and shooting again.

The pilot didn’t announce it, but Nerva saw the missile launch from the orbital batteries around Osdal Actual. It seemed that someone had panicked and fired them at the oncoming fleet and their Combat Shuttles. The fleet’s turrets were searching out the missile platforms and hunting them down. The missiles numbered in the thousands, but the fleet had distance and time. The Seawhizz twitched from one target to another, firing clouds of rounds at the oncoming missiles.

Explosions blossomed ahead of the Combat Shuttle formations. Their own small turrets were on missile defense, taking strain from the Seawhizz and letting them deal with the platforms.

It was an incredible show of people working together against the enemy, but the enemy had too many missiles and the EMF didn’t have enough turrets. The first shuttles started winking out, missiles reaching the forward ships.

Nerva could have stopped watching the sensor feeds, but he didn’t because he was a leader. Those people dying might not be under his chain of command, but he still felt loss seeing them blink out, knowing all too well that those ships could have been his own.

Then he didn’t have time to worry about it because his shuttle was getting tossed and thrown about. Missiles were exploding around the craft, and the Combat Shuttle’s crew fought for their ship, for the people inside the shuttle.

Fuck this shit,
Nerva thought, gritting his teeth against the jostling.

Then the front left section of the shuttle disappeared, light blinded Nerva, and his helmet darkened enough to stop the full light of the explosion sear into his eyes.

Nerva found himself pushed into the wall, the shuttle was in a spin, and outside, stars sped past.

People were flopping around, dead or unconscious. Nerva fought against the nausea, against the panic, trying to get his blood moving normally.

Is this it, is this the end?
he wondered seeing more missiles explode outside of the craft. A thruster must have fired as the gravities pushing him into the wall suddenly pushed him against his harness and he passed out.

Chapter 44

Mining City Twenty-One

Osdal Actual, Osdal System

8/3267

Luke looked at the reports coming in; the EMF was on his doorstep. The asteroid miners were fighting across Processing Station Five and multiple charges had gone off through stations, towers and cities all across Osdal Actual and Osdal Three. He couldn’t even contact Osdal Three, either the communications satellites were out, or the ground stations were out of action.

They had completely lost control of one camp, and the camp workers had fired on the Chosen, killing about fifty. The rest had fled for the city itself.

He looked out of his office window as he stuffed various data cubes and surfaces into a bag.

A section of a tower blew out; he saw powered armor falling from fifteen stories up. The powered armor was impressive, but not that impressive.

“We need to move you sir,” a bodyguard said, bursting into the room.

He was one of the people that Luke had brought with him from Housapel, and he knew the real plan.

“Okay, torch the rest,” Luke said, grabbing his bag and walking out of the office.

His implants were updating with different damages.

Processing Station One confirmed that their servers for the sensor system were out of action.

Someone had fired the majority of their missile platforms at the EMF fleet, wasting them. Only a few carriers had been actually hit; one had a hole in their unarmored side, the others didn’t even seem affected other than losing a few weapon systems.

Converted shuttles were being flushed out of stations, and they were much more effective than the emplaced systems. They weren‘t the best pilots by any stretch of the imagination, but they were dedicated and almost suicidal.

They rushed the carriers, many of them getting cut down, so they changed tactics and hit the Combat Shuttles. The first missile launch had done the most damage to the Combat Shuttles, and the converted shuttles just added to those losses.

The problem was that a converted shuttle rarely lasted long enough to get off their missiles and escape. They got close, dumped their missiles and ran for it, getting cut down either getting to that point or as they tried to escape.

Bodyguards fell in around Luke as he walked out of his living unit. It had been the planet’s CEO’s and he had enjoyed them, but on Earth he would have living quarters even more opulent.

He strode through the hallways, the bodyguards guiding him, they all wore powered armor and toted metal storm rifles that had been carefully maintained. Anyone that got in their way was thrown aside.

Luke quickly got to his shuttle, and they all loaded in, taking off as the last person hit the close door on the hatch. Five other shuttles moved around them.

Luke took time to look at the reports. Osdal had turned to chaos, it had stared in Mining Camp Twenty-One. Apparently someone in the camp had overpowered and killed a dozen people, then proceeded to incite a full-out rebellion. Everything else had snowballed into the current cluster fuck.

“The freighter Kelas is moving to rendezvous with us, the other freighters are loading what they can and proceeding to exit the system,” the bodyguard said.

“Very well.” Luke was partially relieved to be leaving the shit hole of a system behind. It was necessary for Harmony’s goals, but he was a numbers man, dealing with people, mining, he was happy he was done with it.

***

Tyler fired on the approaching chosen, their powered armor shoulder breaking.

He turned and ran through the abandoned housing units. A piece of powered armor came crashing through the wall and Tyler threw himself out of the housing unit through a hole.

He looked over to Ali, and the charges littering the housing units went off. They were directed at the incoming powered armor, but they still managed to hole the walls that the rest of the section were hiding behind. They’d booby-trapped most of the city and then locked it down with their codes.

The powered armor was still getting free and raising havoc. There were even more units than they had feared.

“Fifty rounds left,” Tyler said, as they all scrambled up and ran for the nearest bank of elevators. Dashtund and Niemi took the front, their bolt action rifles slung with their metal storm leading the way. Ko and Ali were right behind them with Tyler bringing up the rear.

Tyler heard something come crashing out of the housing complex, and there was powered armor; it was beaten to hell but it had survived.

Tyler took quick breaths, planted himself and fired at the armor’s crotch. The head was a brick of armor, but they didn’t have much in the groin area.

They went down, blood pouring out of their leg. Tyler hoped he’d hit an artery as he made to catch up with the rest of the section.

Dashtund and Niemi fanned out covering the area, and Ali jammed a crowbar in the elevator doors and opened them up.

“Move it!” Tyler covered the lobby, while Dashtund and Niemi got on the rope and started their descent.

Tyler looked around again before grabbing onto the wall. He let his AMR hang between his legs as he put them against the elevator doors.

He grunted, the elevator doors closing.

He heard more armor running around, and hoped the closed doors would give them more time. He checked the counter on his HUD, ten minutes to go before their ride arrived.

Tyler jumped for the elevator cables and followed the section down. They had been hitting and ambushing Chosen all over the city for an hour, and the fleet was still three hours away. The Combat Shuttles would break atmosphere in ninety minutes.

“Get that door open, got some Chosen to kill,” Tyler said, and Ali drove his crowbar into the elevator doors as Dashtund made stirrups with his hands.