MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors (27 page)

Chapter 22

“Companies C and D, form a skirmish line now.  Squad weapons deployed every twenty-five meters.”  Cyn Kuragina was moving forward at a moderate walk, about as fast as she could maneuver safely on the frozen oxygen and methane that covered Eris’ frigid surface.  The Mark VIII combat armor had been designed for battle in any conditions, even in space itself, but it took a lot of extra care to operate in environments as hostile as Eris.

The two companies had been the first wave, and she’d had them formed up in a defensive cordon.  But now the rest of 1
st
Battalion was down, and the first two companies of Second Battalion would hit ground in five minutes.  She’d been afraid the enemy would attack and try to pinch out her LZ, but they hadn’t made a move.  If it hadn’t been for the energy readings coming from inside the base—and of course the missile attack when the fleet was approaching—she’d have guessed the facility had been abandoned.  There was no fire, no sign of any troops in defensive positions on the surface, no communications.

Now it was time to advance.  Despite appearances, she knew there were enemies inside, and from the size of the base, she expected she’d have her hands full when they made their move. 
Maybe they’re trying to mess with my head, get me to drop my guard.  They should live so long…

“Companies A and B, occupy the defensive perimeter around the LZ until the first wave of 2
nd
Battalion is down.  Then advance in support.”  She looked out over the eerie terrain, an endless plateau of nearly monochrome gray.  She knew it was midday, but Eris was so far from Sol, visibility was poor, no better than dusk on Earth.  Still, with the magnification turned up on her visor, she had a pretty good view of the base.  There were damaged areas, sections where the fleet had destroyed weapons installations.  She knew General Cain had ordered intensive scans, and that they had shown no remaining gun emplacements.  But she was well-aware that orbital scans were far from perfect.  If the enemy wanted to hide something badly enough, chances were they could.

She continued forward, moving a bit more quickly than she suspected she should.  She wanted to get up to her forward positions and take a better look around.  She had to decide where her people would hit the base and force their way in.  The enemy shielding and jamming had prevented more than a cursory scan—enough to find obvious weapons, but not close to coming up with any reasonable guesses about the interior.  Ideally, she’d break in as near the control center or vital engineering facilities as possible.  But with the sketchy intel she had, she was just as likely to blast her way into the kitchens.

She stopped and stooped down behind a small rock outcropping.  There wasn’t much cover around the base, and it seemed as good a spot as any.  She scanned the exterior of the facility, looking for something, anything that might be a good ingress point.  But the enemy saved her the trouble.  Suddenly, access ports opened all along the wall facing her people, and files of armored soldiers came pouring out.

“Eagles,” she said calmly, grimly, “…open fire.”

*        *        *        *        *

Darius Cain was lying flat on his belly, his assault rifle extending forward as he picked off the approaching enemy targets.  It wasn’t an easy position for a man in powered armor, but Cain and his Eagles had mastered it well.  The ground surrounding the base was flat and open, with little natural cover.  And, armored or not, a soldier was a much smaller target lying down.

The enemy troopers were proficient too, though their doctrine appeared to be more tolerant of casualties than Cain’s was.  They were advancing, pushing forward in fairly dense formations and raking his positions with concentrated fire.  It was a good tactic for maximizing the intensity of the ordnance brought down on his people, but it was suicidal against soldiers as good as the Eagles.  His people blazed away at the columns, their well-drilled marksmanship dropping hundreds of the enemy in just a few minutes.

But there were more coming, thousands, he guessed.  The base was massive for a reason it seemed.  For the second time in a few months, Kuragina’s forces were fighting an enemy that vastly outnumbered them.  But they were holding firm, using what little terrain there was to the fullest and coloring the gray surface of Eris with frozen sprays of blood.

He stared at the scanning reports coming in, the first close shots of the enemy soldiers.  He had seen images like this before.  On Lysandria.  There had been no reason to suspect any relationship between Lysandria and Eris, but Cain found that he wasn’t surprised to find one.  Indeed, for no quantifiable reason beyond gut feeling, he’d expected a link.  And now he had it.  Whatever was going on was widespread, something massive in scope…and probably a threat to all of Occupied Space.

Cain remembered the savage fighting on Lysandria, and he had no intention of allowing this to turn into another fight to the finish, not if there was anything he could do to prevent it.  His people had endured a bloodbath on Lysandria, and he had no stomach for another one.

“Kuragina, hold your positions.  Under no circumstance are you to advance without my express order.”

“Yes, sir.”  He could hear the stress in her voice.  She was dead center in the line, and that was where the heaviest enemy concentrations were headed.

“And Cyn, I want your people to get every drone ready to launch when I give the word.  Every last one.”

“Yes, General.”

Cain flashed a thought to his AI, opening a com link to the flagship.  “Eagle One, is Admiral Garret still on the bridge?”

“I’m here, Darius.”  Garret’s voice was raw, hoarse, but there was a feral quality to it as well.  Augustus Garret had a pleasant, easygoing personality—except on the bridge of a warship in battle, where he became the angel of death.  “What can I do for you?”

“You think you could hit the area in front of this base without frying my people?”

There was a short pause, no doubt Garret checking the scanning data.  “It’s tight, Darius, but I think I can manage it.  There’s some risk, but probably less than you fighting without support.”

“Do it.”  Darius Cain was many things, but indecisive wasn’t one of them.  “Give me thirty seconds, and then hit them as hard as you can.”

*        *        *        *        *

Cyn Kuragina crouched behind the small rock and watched as the Eagle fleet pulverized the enemy positions in front of her line.  Eris had almost no atmosphere, nothing to disperse the laser energy of the massive projectors now blasting away from orbit.  The near-vacuum was almost devoid of particulate matter, so the lasers were mostly invisible, apparent to onlookers only when they slammed into the ground, obliterating a cluster of enemy troops and vaporizing the frozen oxygen and methane.

She was impressed with the discipline of the enemy soldiers.  They ignored the heavy bombardment, taking their losses and continuing to advance.  There was no rout, no panic, just a grim movement forward, through the deadly assault.  Their dense columns were ravaged by the fleet’s heavy weapons, but it didn’t slow them at all.

“All units, prepare to fire on my command.”  She gazed out with icy eyes, watching the survivors reform and continue their advance. 
That’s the smart move
, she thought. 
Staying where they were—or even retreating—would only leave them in the target zone longer.
 
Moving toward us shuts down the fleet’s fire.  This is about as pinpoint as orbital barrages get, but once they get within 500 meters, Garret’s going to have to silence the guns…or risk hitting us too. 

She glanced up at her display.  The enemy line was 800 meters away, well within range of her fire.  Normally, she’d wait until they were closer, hit them with a morale-crushing blast of fire at 500 meters.  But that was a strategy for fighting planetary militias and other mercenary companies, troops whose morale could be broken by massive sudden casualties.  She doubted that would work here, and the sooner her people started firing, the more casualties they would inflict. 

They are coming through Garret’s barrage in good order, as sharp and resilient as we could have managed.  We’re not going to break their will easily.  Or at all.  We’re going to have to kill every one of them.  Just like on Lysandria.

“All units…fire!”

*        *        *        *        *

“Let’s go, Eagles!  Into the breach!”  Cain leapt forward, racing toward the shattered wall of the base.  Garret’s barrage had blown a 50 meter opening, and Darius Cain was the first man through, his assault rifle in hand, spewing death in front of him as he ran.

The sight of their commander charging alone into danger worked the rest of the Eagles into a wild frenzy.  They chased after him, pouring into the facility, pushing ahead and forcing Darius behind them, interposing themselves between him and whatever waited in the unknown depths of the station.

The battle on the surface had been short but extremely bloody.  Garret’s bombardment savaged the enemy formations, inflicting casualties as high as 50% in some sections of the line.  But the survivors continued their advance, ignoring losses and moving straight toward the Eagle positions.

The relentless enemy advance would have shaken many forces, Cain knew.  Planetary militias, half-hearted mercenary companies, even veteran armies.  But they weren’t facing any of those.  The force arrayed against them consisted of Black Eagles, and Cain’s deadly soldiers had stood firm, unwavering, firing mercilessly and ignoring their own losses.

The battle had raged for half an hour, and in the end it even came down to hand-to-hand combat in a few places.  The Eagles had inflicted damage that would have broken any normal force, but still the enemy fought on.  When their lines were severed, they continued the struggle in small units and groups.  When those were gunned down they fought alone, and when their ammunition was exhausted they charged toward the nearest Eagles brandishing their molecular blades.

Cain was always rock solid in combat, but this was the closest he’d ever come to being shaken by an enemy’s intensity.  When it was all over, there were almost 3,000 dead in front of the Eagles’ battered lines—and a third of Kuragina’s people had been killed or wounded.

He ran forward as his Eagles streamed around him, spreading out through the facility.  The enemy soldiers were determined to fight to the death, and that’s exactly what Cain’s people were going to give them. 

*        *        *        *        *

“We have to contact whoever is attacking the station and surrender.”  Barkley’s voice was raw and filled with fear.  “Before they blast through the door and kill us all.”

Grax nodded.  “I’m with you, Pete.”  Grax turned and looked out over the 150 or so others in the room.  “Is everybody with us?” he shouted.

A chorus of yesses answered him.

“We need to get out of here.”  The Buyers had directed all the slaving crews on Eris to the bunker when the attack began, over a hundred others besides Grax’s crew.  They’d all obeyed without a second thought.  They were used to rounding up helpless survivors, not facing armored soldiers, and to a man they’d rushed to the safety of the bunker.  It was only after they’d gotten there that Grax realized they were locked in.  It was a refuge certainly—but a prison too.

“Let’s see if we can break out.”  Barkley was looking at Grax, but he turned to stare out across the room.  “Grab this table.”  He gestured to his right.  “Let’s try to break down the door.”

There was a general movement forward, and a dozen men, about half of them from Grax’s and Barkley’s crew, crowded around, lifting the heavy metal table.

“To the door,” Barkley shouted, his voice strained from the exertion.  Even with twelve men holding it, the long table was extremely heavy.

They ran toward the door, slamming into it with the table.  There was a loud crash, but the hatch held firm.  “Turn it onto its side,” Barkley said.  The table was wider than the door, and the walls around the hatch itself had absorbed much of the force.

“Now…again.”  The crowd surged forward again, slamming into the door harder, bringing all of the force to bear.  The hatch was dented, but still it held.

“Again,” Barkley yelled, and the mass surged forward once more, pushing hard with all their strength.

*        *        *        *        *

Cyn Kuragina swung around, squeezing the trigger on her assault rifle as she did.  Two enemy soldiers dropped, each with a pair of holes in the visors of their armor.  Even without AI-assisted fire control, Kuragina was a crack shot.  But in her armor, with the computerized presence assisting her, she almost never missed.

Her people had been moving through the facility, sweeping for the last of the enemy troopers and searching for the control room or some other vital facility.  She knew General Cain wanted prisoners, but the enemy soldiers didn’t surrender—indeed, they didn’t stop fighting for an instant.  Not until they were dead or incapacitated.