Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (13 page)

Orozco stuck a toothpick into the tin and lifted up a headless fish the size of a finger.

“Espinaler sardines, best in the world
.
Packed fresh off the boat and aged in the can for at least a year. I had a few tins with me when the fleet jumped.” Orozco took a bite and closed his eyes. “This is the last tin. Anywhere. Want some?” He held the tin out to his fellow Marines.

“No thanks, you’re enjoying it too much,” Torni said.

“The last can? I thought you’d save it for something special, not a meal break in the middle of Swamp Ass City,” Bailey said.

“We fight in the morning, yes? I’d hate to die and have my last thought be ‘I should have eaten my
sardinas
,’” Orozco said.

The sound of something thumping against the landing zone came around the ammo shelter. Orozco downed his last sardine and wiped his mouth. His hand went to his sidearm as the sound approached the entrance.

Gunnery Sergeant Cortaro stepped into view, wearing duty fatigues and flak armor around his torso. His left leg was missing below the knee, replaced by a metal peg.

“Look at you all, sitting around smokin’ and jokin’ when there’s work to be done,” Cortaro said.

“Gunney!” Standish leapt from his seat and ran to Cortaro like he was a kid attacking presents on Christmas morning. Standish hugged Cortaro, whose stony countenance never wavered.

“Sergeant Torni tries hard, but no one chews me out like you do,” Standish said. He looked down at Cortaro’s peg leg and his eyes lit up.

“One pirate joke and I’ll sew your lips shut,” Cortaro said.

Standish’s mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked.

“Good to see you up and around, Gunney,” Torni said.

“Doc cleared me for light duty after I got this.” Cortaro tapped the peg against the deck. “I’ll get a replacement from a stem-cell vat when we get back home. In the meantime, I convinced him to give me a field-expedient solution. There’s only so much sick-bay food and Telemundo reruns I can handle. But you’ve all had enough rest for one day. Get your gear back on and follow me. We’ve got a mountain of shit to unload and you’re all on the detail.”

The Marines grumbled and donned their armor.

****

Hale covered his face as the Destrier landed, the turbo-fan engines built into its stubby wings blowing hot air and dirt against him and a handful of Dotok. The pair of armor soldiers behind them stood impassively.

The Destrier set down hard, bouncing against the shocks on its landing struts. Whatever it was, carrying it was heavy work.

The ramp lowered as the engines slowed to a stop. Two figures walked down the ramp, one a ginger-haired sailor, the other a cyborg from the neck down.

“Gentlemen,” Hale said to the assembled Dotok, “this is Senior Master Chief MacDougall and Lafayette of the Karigole. They have a plan, and they need your help.”

Un’qu’s hand went to his sidearm and he stepped between Lafayette and the other Dotok, who looked uneasy.

“It is a
noorla
. How is this possible?”

“I admit to a passing resemblance,” Lafayette said, “what with the extensive augmentation, but I am here to help, not commit genocide.”

“There’s another one like him, but bigger,” a Dotok said.

“Yes, Steuben. Much bigger and much uglier. Aesthetics aside, our installation window has a one-hour margin of error. Shall we begin?” Lafayette asked.

“I am the chief engineer for the
Canticle of Reason
,” said a Dotok with a red-and-black checkered sash over his shoulder. “What are you planning to do to my ship?”

“We are going to make it float,” Lafayette said. “Behind me is the first drop ship, of many, full of anti-grav plating that I manufactured with the omnium reactor the
Breitenfeld
liberated from an alien starship.”

“You ripped a piece out of my beautiful ship and fed it to that infernal machine of yours,” MacDougall said.

“A truth, no matter how inelegantly put, is still the truth.” The Karigole held up a set of blueprints. “This is where we must install the plating on the
Canticle
. Two hundred and ninety seven unique plates to achieve buoyancy in this gravity well. Another four hundred and six to break orbit.”

“Madness,” the chief engineer said. “Arrogance of the highest order. If even one of these plates is calibrated incorrectly, the sheer forces will rip the ship apart.”

“I’ve done the math. Twice. I am fully confident in my work,” Lafayette said.

“What good will it do to get the
Canticle
off world? The ship has no engines,” another Dotok said.

“The
Breitenfeld
will use its jump drive to open a wormhole around the
Canticle
, the
Blade
and itself. We won’t be able to jump all the way to Earth on the first attempt, but it will get us out of the system and away from the Xaros,” Lafayette said.

“Why are we still talking? There’s work to be done,” MacDougall said.

“How many engineers can you muster?” Lafayette asked the Dotok as they looked over the blueprints. The Dotok muttered to themselves and tapped at the schematics with pencil tips. “Gentlemen?”

“Yes. Every Dotok adult with a tertius or better List rating has their basic engineering certificate. I can have at least five hundred technicians on this project within hours,” said Levin, the chief engineer.

“I will provide boot-in-the-arse certificates for anyone working too slow,” MacDougall said.

“He means he’s here to supervise,” Lafayette said. “If your technicians are as proficient as the
Breitenfeld
’s crew, we should finish the project within the time allotted.”

“And how much time do we need?” Hale asked.

“The jump engines will have enough charge to reach a minimum safe distance in twenty-seven hours,” Lafayette said.

“The banshees should be here in four.” Hale looked to the east, where the first light of the morning brought a red hue to the distant horizon. “Same time as the next invasion fleet.”

“We must hold them beyond the walls,” Elias said.

“Any damage to the
Canticle
will unbalance the anti-grav equations,” Lafayette said.

“Meaning?” Hale asked.

“Meaning the ship will likely break in half if we try an uplift without recalibrating the plates,” Lafayette said.

“Are we all clear on our responsibilities? The engineers get the ship ready for uplift. Civilian government gets everyone on the ship. Soldiers hold the walls,” Hale said. With no objections, Hale clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to work.”

The engineers broke away, chattering to themselves.

“You brought us here for a different purpose,” Elias said to Hale.

“We don’t fix things,” said the other suit of armor, his voice accented.

“You must be Chief Warrant Officer Silva, from the Smoking Snakes,” Hale said. The team of Brazilian armor soldiers had been assigned to the
Breitenfeld
just before the mission to Anthalas. A late addition to the Atlantic Union, Brazil had a small presence in the Saturn colonial mission. The three mechanized armor soldiers and their team of mechanics and support personnel were the only Brazilians left on Earth. The only nation with fewer natives in the fleet was China—the three Ma cousins.

“Correct,” Silva said.

“I have six suits of armor to defend this city,” Hale said, “and I want to go over my plan with you. There are tunnels,” Hale said, unfolding a map of the city and surrounding mountains from his cargo pocket, “large enough to fit a suit. The Dotok blew the grav-train tunnels running from here to the outlying settlements to keep the banshees from using them, but they only collapsed the tunnels on the far end. We can still get in from here.”

“The tunnels run through the planet’s crust. Do you think we can dig through that?” Silva asked.

“All the tunnels but one.” Hale pointed to a rail line running through the spine of a mountain range north of the city. “This one goes to Usonvi. Not a train that rides the planet’s gravity well. A plain, old-fashioned pull locomotive buried under just enough rock to protect it from solar storms. And…there are access points along the way. Dotok set them up to install and maintain communication relays.”

“You want us to ambush the attackers,” Elias said.

“Slow them down. Give me time to hit them with the gremlins and the rest of our artillery. That should thin them out to the point where we can beat them on the walls,” Hale said.

“And what about us?” Silva asked.

“Then you come back through the tunnel and man the walls with us,” Hale said.

The armor stood silent as the two warriors conferred without including Hale.

“The plan is solid. We approve,” Elias said.

“Not bad…for a Marine,” Silva said.

****

One of the first skills Torni mastered in the Marine Corps was the ability to fall asleep in full armor, or crammed into a transport with a dozen others, and while standing in formation during any address from a superior officer that lasted more than a few minutes. Sleeping on the eve of combat had always proven more difficult to master.

She let her chin sink slowly toward her chest, her mind slowly releasing thoughts of the many things that could go wrong and what kind of trouble her Marines were about to stir up. The enemy was another hour away; she could afford a cat nap. Her chin hit her chest and she snuggled against the bulkhead of an old spaceship tender and began to drift.

“Sarge!” Bailey’s voice snapped Torni back to full wakefulness and she brushed her fingers over her rifle, ensuring it was set to
SAFE
.

“What?” Torni looked around and saw Bailey lying on the deck, staring through the scope on her sniper rifle.

“We’ve got incoming,” Bailey said, gum snapping in her mouth.

“Send it to me,” Torni said. She flipped her visor down and saw the feed from Bailey’s optics. A wide wall of dirt blew in from the distance, many miles away. “Bailey, there are dust storms on this planet all the time. That’s what you’re seeing.”

“No, Sarge. Before I joined up, I was in the Northern Territories police force. Used to run interdiction on the Chinese trying to sneak into Alice Springs. I know the difference between a dust storm, a couple Jeeps kicking up dirt and the mess behind a herd of camels,” she said.

Torni watched the feed, waiting for some kind of change that might convince her one way or another.

“What would you do with the Chinese when you found them?”

“Well, by the armistice agreement, we were supposed to escort any Chinese that ‘got lost’ back north to the DMZ. But…lots of accidents can happen in the Outback,” Bailey said. “Wait, got a better look here…I think we’re good and buggered, Sarge.”

On the feed, a rolling mass of banshees came up over a ridgeline—so many that it looked like a grand herd of buffalo she’d seen running across the Montana plains. Torni opened the command channel.

“Lieutenant, this is Torni. You need to see this.”

Valdar twisted a dial, looking through the camera feeds around his ship watching New Abhaile. They could only make out the leading edge of the banshee swarm as the dust cloud rising over them blocked out visual and IR cameras. There could be hundreds, or thousands, of banshees heading to the city.

On a tactical plot manned by a team of sailors, the oncoming fleet of compromised ships was well on their way. The six ships skirted just above the upper atmosphere, fighting through the drag.

“Sir,” said Erdahl, a platinum-haired Swede, adjusting the course vectors on the tactical plot, “sir, if the hostile ships maintain this course, they’ll hit New Abhaile.”

“A kamikaze mission, can’t say I’m surprised,” Valdar said. “Conn, set an intercept course, flank speed. Gunnery,” Valdar turned to Utrecht, “deploy the javelins and leave them in geo-synch over the city, transfer launch authority to Hale, and work up a firing solution on those cruisers. Those ships must mass in the millions of tons. One of those hits New Abhaile…”

Valdar opened a channel to the
Burning Blade
. “Ty’ken, you see all this?”

“Yes, Captain, I will match speed with you and engage,” Ty’ken said.

“No, stay and hold your position. Give me a few minutes to get up to speed, see how the enemy reacts. If any get past me, it’s up to you to knock ’em down,” Valdar said.

“Affirmative, good hunting.” Ty’ken closed the channel.

Valdar pointed to the XO. “Prep fighter and bomber intercept. Tell Gall to launch once we’re at speed.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Ericcson said.

“Get me Hale,” he said to the comms officer, who had to maintain the IR laser connection with the buoy over New Abhaile.

“This is Hale.”

“Son, I’ve got to break off. Cruisers are coming in hot and fast. If I don’t get them early, they’ll hit you hard enough you’ll swear they’re using nukes,” Valdar said. “I left five javelins in orbit for you. Command prompts should be coming to you now.”

“Sir, what do we do if a ship gets past you?”
Hale asked.

“There’s not a whole lot you
can
do,” he said.
Other than stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye
, he thought. “We’ll double back soon as we can. How long can you hold out?”

“Depends on how many there are. No sign of drones yet,”
Hale said.

“
Gott mit uns,
Valdar out.” He made a chopping motion across his neck and the comms officer ended the transmission.

****
 

Durand’s Eagle shook as the acceleration from her thrusters pressed her against her seat. She cut back the power, enough to keep her velocity constant in the thick upper atmosphere.

“Not too fast, everyone, we overshoot the targets and we’re out of the battle,” she said to her squadron. The 103rd had become a mishmash of human and Dotok pilots in the last few hours. The incoming cruisers had come in hours before anticipated, and half her fighter pilots were flying cargo missions to and from the capital when word came to prep for launch. She had two other Eagles in the void with her, the Ma cousins on a Condor bomber and the eight Dotok pilots from the
Burning Blade
.

“Gall, this is Bar’en. My fighters have gauss cannons and nothing else. We can barely scratch the paint on those cruisers. Care to explain why we’re even out here?”

“Do you see any drones escorting the capital ships? Trick question. You can’t because we’re too damn far away. You’re here to cover my Eagles and the bombers. Save the sharpshooting for the planning phase or the after-action review,” Durand said. Multicultural operations were normal within the Atlantic Union military, which was drawn from dozens of nations. Decades of interaction had smoothed out most issues between nations; even the Ma cousins managed to get along without incident.

Dotok notions of respect for the chain of command were harder to grasp, or maybe Bar’en was his species’ equivalent of a jerk.

“Clear the firing line from the
Breit
to the leading cruiser. Let her big guns take care of it,” Durand said and nosed her fighter toward the cruiser on the far left of the approaching wedge.

“Christ, those things are big,” said Ryan, one of her two wingmen. A burning iris of superheated gas enveloped the prows of the approaching ships, each nearly twice the size of the
Breitenfeld.

“Nag, how long until you have a torpedo solution?”

“At the rate they’re closing? Four minutes. I barely have to aim, just set the torps in their path and let Newton’s laws do the rest,” she said.

“Eagles, prep your rail guns. Go for an angled shot through the engines,” Durand said. “Far-left cruiser is the priority target. Knock it offline and target the next one on the left.
Breit
will start on the other end and work toward the center.”

“I’ve got a firing solution. IR guidance backup establish on torpedoes one and—”

A burst of light from the cruisers overwhelmed the transmission with static. Durand’s canopy darkened to protect her from the sudden glare.

A muffled scream came through the IR. “I can’t see! Can’t see!” Ryan shouted.

Durand blinked away spots and she was flying into the void.

“Get back on intercept course and reacquire targets!” Durand tried to shout over the confusion reigning on the channel. She looped her fighter around and found the enemy cruisers.

The cruisers had broken into two groups of three. One group maintained its original course, engines burning like the center of a star as they accelerated. The second group bore to the south, away from New Abhaile.

In the wake of the cruisers screaming toward New Abhaile, hundreds of pinpricks of light blossomed against the atmosphere—escape pods full of banshees headed for the surface.

“They dropped their pods,” Glue called out. “Over the middle of nowhere?”

“Capitol ships now, pods later,” Durand said. With the cruisers accelerating, there was no way her fighters could change course and catch up with them once they passed each other. “OK ladies, we’ve got one shot at this. Make it count.”

“Durand, this is Ericcson. Stand by for main guns.”

“Butler, Ryan, line up your shots,” Durand said. She angled her rail gun at a cruiser and aimed for one of the four engine spheres. “Fire on Valdar’s signal.” She flipped the safety switch off her control stick and waited.

“Main guns, fire!”
Valdar shouted.

Durand pressed the trigger and her Eagle bucked as her rail cannon sent a hypervelocity slug screeching toward the cruiser. She brought her emergency batteries online to charge up another shot and watched her shot close on the target, like an arrow from a long bow on a far older battlefield. The rail shot glowed like an ember as it neared…and went through the cruiser’s wake, missing.

“Glue, tell me you got a better shot off than I did,” Durand said. She glanced at her battery power: less than forty percent and rising far too slow for her to do any more good.

“Torpedo impact in three…two…one,” Glue said. An explosion against the prow knocked the cruiser off course, exposing its port side to the full force of Takeni’s atmosphere rushing past it. The ship lurched backwards and broke into a thousand fiery pieces.

“Good shooting, Glue! Target the next cruiser.”

Durand saw burning dots shoot through the sky and strike a cruiser. The
Breitenfeld
’s
rail cannons cored the ship, blasting through the four engines and turning the ship into a fireball so bright she had to look away.

By the time she reacquired the remaining cruiser, it had passed beneath her.

“Damn it, I’ve got no shot with my rail cannon. Glue, Butler, Ryan, can you engage?” Durand asked.

“Negative, shot my wad,” Butler said.

“The torpedoes are too slow for a wake shot,” Glue said.

“Ryan? Ryan respond,” Durand waited, but there was no response.

“Breitenfeld
, that last one’s on you,” Durand said.

****

“I don’t care if you’ve got a lousy shot! Fire the main guns now!” Valdar shouted. The third cruiser was ahead of the ship, its heat shield glowing like a hot poker.

The main guns roared, roiling the deck beneath Valdar’s feet. Rail cannon shots left a searing line in the sky, and Valdar followed it all the way as they closed on the cruiser…and missed. It took two minutes for a good crew to reload the rail cannons and recharge the capacitors. The cruiser would overtake them in less than one.

“Helm, bring us about. Try to angle the dorsal cannon for a wake shot on the cruiser,” Valdar said.

“Ugh, sir?” Ensign Geller said.

The cruiser had adjusted course slightly and was headed straight for the
Breitenfeld
.

“All power to starboard engines!”

The ship swung to the left, throwing the bridge crew against their restraints. Valdar watched as the cruiser closed and thundered over their heads.

“Gunnery! Make ready with the dorsal—”

The
Breitenfeld
shook as the tortured air from the cruiser’s wake battered the ship.

Valdar braced himself against his command chair and watched as his ship tipped over and headed toward the surface.

“Conn, get us level and increase altitude! Gunnery, prepare to fire,” Valdar said.

“If I fire the dorsal cannons from this angle, it’ll send the ship into a death spiral,” Utrecht said. “You’ll kill us all for a shot we can’t make!”

Valdar’s jaw clenched. He wouldn’t throw away the lives of everyone on his ship on a forlorn hope, not when there was another chance.

“
Burning Blade
, this is
Breitenfeld
. Can you engage the cruiser?”

“This is Ty’ken. We’ll do what we must.
Gott mit uns.
”

****

Hale walked atop New Abhaile’s perimeter wall, his eyes on the approaching storm. Dotok armed with bulky gauss rifles hunkered against sandbag fighting positions. Hale nodded to the defenders as he passed them by, careful to keep his pace even and controlled.

Un’qu, on the other hand, had nearly sweat through his fatigues and kept tapping his fingertips against his rifle.

“Un’qu, stop fidgeting,” Hale said.

“How? Aren’t you scared?”

“Of course I am, but you can’t let that show. Your men are a magnifying glass on your emotions. You look scared and they’ll be terrified. You look brave and they’ll take on a lion with their bare hands.”

“What’s a lion?”

“Big cat,” Hale said, but the description seemed to go right over Un’qu’s head. “A monster. They’ll fight monsters with their bare hands so long as you look—not feel—look like you’re brave. Got it?”

Un’qu swallowed hard and nodded.

“Raider Six, this is Crimson.”
A call from one of the other strike team leaders came over the IR.
“We’ve got bogies coming in from the southwest. I count at least forty, maybe more. Permission to engage with quadrium munitions.”

“Negative on quadrium, not until they enter range of the
Canticle,
”
Hale said. The defenders had four quadrium rounds left, jewels beyond price in a fight against Xaros drones. Forty drones against a city full of defenders armed with gauss rifles and a battery of flack guns mounted around the
Canticle
, the odds were in his favor.

“Look!” One of the Dotok soldiers pointed to the sky. The drones were high above, emerging and disappearing from amongst the clouds.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” Un’qu asked.

“I don’t know.” Hale watched the drones then looked to where they were heading—right for the mass of approaching banshees.

“Raider Six, this is Bailey. The banshees have stopped,” she said.

“What’re they doing?”

“Just standing there, you want me to start picking them off?”

“Do you see any leadership targets?”

“Negative, they’re all pretty much the same giant walking nightmares we know and love,” she said.

“Then hold your fire. Don’t flag yourself for special attention just yet,” Hale said. Bailey answered him with a smack from her gum.

An eerie calm fell over the city, and a horrible memory came back to Hale.

“I need to get back to the command post,” he said, backing away from the edge of the wall, his eyes glued on the wall of kicked-up dust that was slowly settling.

From the dust, a gargantuan shadow emerged. Four spider legs joined together beneath a giant black mass of fused drones, the burning eye of a cannon at its center. The construct stepped over the front rank of the banshees and braced itself against the ground. The banshees began running, like the starting shot of a footrace had just gone off.