Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn (9 page)

It had been a hard fight. Samuels’ people had
cleared the opposite hillside, outflanking and maneuvering the
enemy out of their position. It had been masterfully done, and
Taylor had been particularly impressed by Bear’s execution. Taylor
had expected a lot from him, but he’d gotten even more. Samuels had
accomplished a virtual miracle with his pack of newbs.

The battle to seize the ground outside the
base had been a different story. Taylor’s men had paid for every
bloody step. They’d had two attacks repulsed and, for a while, he
thought they were going to come up short. Twice he’d called for
fire support. But the narrow valley was a dangerous place for a
Dragonfire gunship, and central command had refused both requests,
instructing Taylor to continue his assault with the resources he
had. He was used to the high command putting materiel over men, but
he was surprised this time…he had thought this mission was
important enough to override the usual bullshit protocol.

It was. Taylor didn’t know it, but he’d twice
been authorized Dragonfire support, only to have the orders
countermanded by higher authority for undisclosed reasons. Jake
Taylor was on his own, and his performance was being closely
watched…though he had no idea any of this was going on.

Finally, he ordered Bear to post a small
flank guard and attack down off the hillside with the rest of his
men. The combined assault proved to be too much for the Machines
defending the trenches. They pulled back, leaving 2/3 of their
numbers behind, dead in their works.

Now the enemy was trying to integrate all the
units that had withdrawn and organize a counterattack. Taylor’s
exhausted and shattered sections had to hold the ground they’d
taken…and give the engineers a chance to break through the enemy
fortifications. There were no reserves…they were on their own. The
rest of the battalion had moved to cut off enemy reinforcements
approaching from the north. If fresh Machine units got through,
Taylor’s people wouldn’t have a chance. At 50% strength, fatigued,
and low on ammo, they’d be swept away like dry leaves in the
breeze.

“Jarrod, get those mortars repositioned. I
want fire on those bastards. They don’t get a chance to regroup.
Understood?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Voices coming through on
the implanted com unit always sounded a little strange…hollow,
tiny. But hearing himself called lieutenant was stranger still.
“We’re on the way, sir.”

The enemy had taken out one of the mortars,
along with its entire team. Corporal Stone and his people didn’t
have any warning. They’d been changing their position after every
two shots, but the enemy still managed to target them and score a
direct hit. Jarrod ran over to see if there were any survivors, but
he couldn’t find a piece of anybody bigger than a softball.

“Lieutenant Taylor…Captain Graves here.”
Graves was the lead engineer. His crew were UN regulars, not UNFE
lifers. There was a lot of resentment between the conscripts
condemned to Erastus and the short-term UN specialists with a
ticket home, but Taylor had made it clear to his people he wasn’t
going to tolerate anything less than total support for the
engineers.

“Yes, Captain.” Taylor didn’t share the
resentment. He might hate the higher ups, the people who made the
policies that sent him and his brethren to die on Erastus. But that
animosity didn’t extend to a team of engineers. He might envy their
ticket home, but that wasn’t the same thing. They didn’t create the
situation any more than he did. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re going to blow the plasma charges in 3
minutes. I need all your people at least 500 meters from the hatch
by then.”

Taylor sighed. Three minutes wasn’t much
time. “Understood, Captain.” There was no use arguing. Graves
didn’t have any latitude, and Taylor knew it. Getting into that
base was worth more than his entire strikeforce to UN Command…worth
more than all of Graves’s men too. Any of his people who were too
close in three minutes would be vaporized by a plasma charge. On
UNFE’s spreadsheet it would be just so many more casualties in the
glorious victory.

“Attention all personnel.” He was practically
shouting into his com. “I want everyone a minimum of 600 meters…”
He added an extra 100, just to be safe. “…from the hatch in two
minutes.” His voice was commanding, his tone urgent. He didn’t
intend to lose any rookies because they fucked around instead of
obeying his orders immediately.

Taylor tapped the controls on his helmet,
activating his tactical display. He took a quick glance, making
sure everyone was obeying his withdraw order. Satisfied, he tapped
his com to Black’s line. “Blackie, I’ll be going in with the
engineers in a few. You’ll be in charge out here while I’m in the
base.” With the rest of the battalion was positioned on the
northern perimeter, Taylor was in command around the base itself.
“If anything gets through the outer defenses, you need to keep the
valley clear. Dig in on both sides, and put the mortars in the
center so you can fire in either direction.”

“Got it, Jake.” Black’s voice was sharp, but
Taylor could hear the fatigue too. The 2nd Section had been in the
forefront of the attack, and they’d borne the brunt of the losses.
Taylor’s old command was nearly shattered, but he knew they’d still
do the job. He was trusting them with his life. He was leading Hank
Daniels’ 1st Section inside with the engineers, and if the enemy
retook the valley while they were in the base, none of them would
get out.

“Lieutenant Taylor, Captain Graves here.
Detonation in 30 seconds.” Taylor could see the engineers on his
tactical display, running away from the base entrance, putting
enough distance between themselves and the charges. “It’ll take
about five minutes for the area to cool down enough for us to go
in.” Cool down was definitely a relative term on Erastus. “Have
your people ready and in position by then.”

“Understood, Captain.” Taylor felt a small
flush, not anger, really…more annoyance. He realized he didn’t like
getting anything that sounded like orders from the engineer. Not
when they concerned one of his combat forces. But he bit back on
it. “We’ll be ready, sir.”

“Launch light modules.” It was dark in the
passage, the kind of pitch blackness you could only dream about
most places on Erastus. It was all well and good to wish for relief
from the relentless sunlight, but Taylor and his men, their eyes
adjusted to the brightness of two massive suns, were ill-equipped
to maneuver in the dark.

There was a whoomp sound, then another. Then
half a dozen more. The light modules could be attached to the
assault rifles like grenades. They were polycarbonate globes
generating light through a contained chemical reaction. They lasted
around six hours, and each one could light up an area with a
diameter of roughly six meters.

Taylor looked down the passage, now lit by
the modules. It was about ten meters wide, and it stretched deep
into the mountainside. The light globes were doing their job well.
All of Taylor’s people had flashlights, but a handheld light was
more effective at giving the holder’s position away to a hidden
enemy than providing useful illumination. The modules were far more
effective, and the grenade launchers could throw them several
hundred meters.

“Alright, 1st Team take point.” Taylor was
going to follow just behind his advanced team, the engineers and
the rest of the section falling in behind him. “Prepare to move
out.”

Hank Daniels had been at the end of the
formation, organizing the teams bringing up the rear. Now he
trotted forward to Taylor’s position. “It’s hard to believe we’re
actually inside an enemy base, isn’t it, Jake?” He shouldn’t have
been calling his superior officer by his first name, but Taylor
wasn’t a stickler for formality…and he certainly wasn’t used to
being an officer. Besides, Daniels was rapidly becoming a member of
Jake’s inner circle.

“It’s pretty incredible.” The response was
perfunctory, without emotion. Taylor looked around him. The walls
were smooth, the bare rock coated with some unidentified material.
Taylor knew he was inside the lair of a species far ahead of his
own, but all he could think about was the cost. Half his people had
been killed and wounded taking this place…and from what he could
piece together, the rest of the battalion had suffered almost as
badly. He knew it was a big step forward for the war effort, but it
was still too early to think of it in those terms. The losses were
still too fresh.

“I know it was a hard fight, Jake.” Daniels
had a pretty good idea why Taylor was so somber. “But at least it
wasn’t a waste. We’re a big step closer to ending the war on
Erastus. That’s something, at least. How many of our people have
died on this miserable rock for nothing?”

Taylor took a deep breath. Daniels was right;
he knew that. But it was still hard to see the big picture, to
decide how many mangled and dead soldiers an objective was worth.
“I know you’re right, Spider.” He paused. “But it’s just hard for
me to see it that way. That’s all speculation…and these dead boys
are real.” Taylor knew he shouldn’t be commiserating with a
subordinate in the middle of an operation, but he had to get
through all of this somehow. He tried to be the unmoving rock,
always there for his men, never in need of support himself. That
was a great image, but an illusion, an impossible standard.

Daniels had to suppress a smile when Taylor
called him Spider. He’d picked up the handle when he was a sniper,
and none other than Jake Taylor had given it to him. Taylor was a
corporal and team leader when Daniels arrived on Gehenna. The
rookie was a crack shot from the beginning, so Cadogan made him a
sniper. But it wasn’t his aim that was truly extraordinary…it was
his patience. Daniels could stay in a hidden position, motionless
for hours, just waiting for his shot. One day Taylor compared him
to a spider sitting in its web waiting for prey, and that was that.
The name stuck.

“Look at it this way, then.” Daniels turned
his head, glancing over at Taylor. “Maybe the war here will end
sooner…and in ten years a whole batch of kids won’t get blackmailed
into throwing their lives away because of this.”

Taylor didn’t respond, but he thought about
what Daniels said. It made sense, but it was still hard for him to
accept that anything could justify the casualties and suffering his
people had endured…and he figured that next group of kids would
just get sent someplace else to die.

“OK, Lieutenant Taylor, we’re all set.”
Captain Graves was walking up from behind. He had been in the rear,
supervising his crew as they prepped their equipment. The engineer
wore the same sand-colored fatigues as Taylor and his troops, but
his were totally soaked through with sweat, making them look
darker. Other than his obvious distress from the heat and the
silver Engineering Corps insignia on his shoulder, he could have
been any officer in UNFE. Except Graves was going back home
someday.

“Very well, sir.” He tapped the com pad on
his helmet. “1st team, move out.” Taylor turned his head and
glanced at Graves, nodding. Then he followed his advancing troops
down the dimly lit corridor.

“Machines moving down the west passage.”
Taylor could hear shooting in the background as Corporal Danton
made his report. Taylor had sent Danton and his team to investigate
the scanner contacts they’d been picking up. Jake had been afraid
it was an internal security force…a fear that now seemed
well-founded.

The main force had worked its way deep into
the complex, locating the main power core after a lengthy search.
They’d encountered a few sentries, and they’d lost one man, but
they managed to reach their objective without running into too much
resistance. Graves and his men were setting the nuclear charge
while Taylor’s people guarded the approaches. Ideally, UN Command
would want to hang on to a facility like this. The potential for
researching the enemy’s superior technology was considerable. But
it was too risky to try and hold it. The base was deep in an
enemy-dominated zone, and they would likely launch a counterattack
to retake it. UNFE had only managed to mount an attack against the
facility because of surprise. The enemy thought the location was
secret, as it still would be had it not been for a random
communications intercept and some educated guessing by UNFE
Intelligence.

The only tactically sound choice was to
destroy the place, thus beginning the long process of attriting the
enemy’s strength on the planet by destroying or capturing the
production facilities. There had been 8-14 factories on the Portal
worlds already conquered. If Erastus followed the pattern, the
destruction of this facility would eliminate approximately 10% of
the enemy’s replacement capacity. The Tegeri didn’t seem to bring
reinforcements through the Portals…they produced the Machines
on-planet. When the production facilities were all taken or
destroyed, they seemed to give up the fight.

“Lieutenant, we’ve got a lot of Machines
coming at us.” Danton’s tone was tense, harried. “They’re advancing
from two directions now.” There was a short pause, then: “Sir, they
seem to be very disorganized. Not like normal Machines at all.”

“You need to hold them, Corporal.” Jake’s
voice was firm. “At all costs. I’m sending you some backup now.” He
paused. “No one gets by you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

Taylor turned toward Daniels. “Hank, send
another team to support Danton. He’s got Machines coming in from
two directions.” Taylor was in overall command, of course, but he
didn’t want to step on Daniels’ toes too badly. Danton had panicked
and called Taylor directly…he really should have reported to
Daniels. It was tough on a unit commander to have a superior
officer along with no other units to command. It was easy to
marginalize the junior commander. But Taylor had been in Daniels’
shoes before, and he made sure to respect his subordinate.