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Authors: Autumn M. Birt
The Fight for Peace
Friends of my Enemy: Book 4
The Fight for Peace
by Autumn M. Birt
© 2015 Autumn M. Birt
Cover art by Autumn M. Birt © 2015
Kindle Edition
Kindle Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Novels in the Friends of my Enemy series:
Book 1:
Stories from the War
Book 2:
After the War
Book 3:
Battle for Europe
Book 4: The Fight for Peace
Learn more about the series
Friends of my Enemy
here
, including background information and release dates.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:
Tashkent
Chapter 2:
Testimony
Chapter 3:
Compromises
Chapter 4:
A Second Chance
Chapter 5:
Report
Chapter 6:
Merimarche
Chapter 7:
Enlistment
Chapter 8:
Free Argentina
Chapter 9:
Meeting the Enemy
Chapter 10:
While the King’s Away
Chapter 11:
Training Officer
Chapter 12:
Basic Training
Chapter 13:
Trial and Error
Chapter 14:
Change of Guard
Chapter 15:
Isle Royale
Chapter 16:
Brewing Trouble
Chapter 17:
Graduation
Chapter 18:
To Find Peace
Chapter 19:
Recall to Duty
Chapter 20:
The End of Peace
Chapter 21:
Baited Trap
Chapter 22:
Death of a Relationship
Chapter 23:
Narrow Margin
Chapter 24:
Home Field Advantage
Chapter 25:
On the Border
Chapter 26:
Battle Plans
Chapter 27:
One Step too Far
Chapter 28:
Splitting the Guard
Chapter 29:
Assault on Isle Royale
Chapter 30:
Assault on Crystal City
Chapter 31:
By Land and Water
Chapter 32:
Meeting Old Enemies
Chapter 33:
Failed Mission
Chapter 34:
War Reports
Chapter 35:
Tipping Point
Chapter 36:
Desperate Gamble
Chapter 37:
After the War
Excerpt from Spark of Defiance
Chapter 1
December 2068
CAPTAIN JARED VRIES
TASHKENT
"We have a convoy of FLF military incoming," Lieutenant Farrak Assad said over the comm.
Jared swore before he opened the line on his end to reply. “How far out?”
“Six hours to your location,” Farrak replied. The sound of explosions mixed with his words. If Jared listened carefully, he could hear the same blasts after a slight delay from the distance.
“Can you make it take them eight?”
“Yes, Captain,” Farrak confirmed. Jared dropped the comm link so that Farrak could deal with the more immediate, and explosive, problems.
Six days had passed without finding or creating access to the underground weapons depot in Tashkent. And now they were out of time, but not just because the FLF was arriving. Events in Europe were pressing for his and Arinna’s return as well. MOTHER’s trial would begin in less than three days. They needed to get back. Cracked weapons bunker or not.
Arinna swore when he told her of the convoy closing in. She tapped her finger on the stack of maps and schematics laid across the table of the transport plane used as mobile headquarters, but her gaze rested on the nondescript building visible through the small reinforced window.
The sun was beginning to set. The slanting light cast the square concrete building into stark relief, its shadow stretching over what looked to be a dead and mostly barren lawn. The building was the most visible sign of the existence of the underground warehouse. Standing four stories tall, the structure was pot-marked and unmaintained, windows boarded over.
Jared was surprised that such a decrepit looking building had kept them, the Guard, at bay for so long. But the underground bunker hidden beneath the ramshackle lawn was well built and heavily defended. So far, they had not been able to find a weakness in the fortifications or defensive weapons. Such was the problem of trying to raid a weapons storage depot. The enemy simply had too much available to use in an effort to keep them out.
“Eight hours and then we’ll be fighting on two fronts pinched between an outside line against a defensive wall,” Arinna said.
Her expression was grim as she looked down at the plans to the underground portion of the warehouse that multiple scans had produced. The complex was incredibly well fortified and defended. It seemed impossible to breach, and if they did make it into its narrow halls the massive amount of stored weaponry made it a costly prospect to take in soldiers and remaining weapons. If they could. Costly in time too, as it had already proved. Jared was at a loss, but wild leaps of strategy wasn’t what he was known for. That was Arinna. And that she stared at the maps without her usual canary that ate the cat expression left him nervous.
“I’d really hoped to take those weapons too,” she said with a glance at Jared. There was more fire in her eyes than he’d thought. “I guess we are on to plan B.”
“Which is?”
“The option where we don’t have to get in.”
Jared rocked back on his heels. “You want to blow it.” He swore quietly. “We don’t even know what is in there.”
“We can’t let the FLF keep it. From what Derrick learned in Crystal City, this is the main weapons depot on this continent at least. The fact they are racing here to help defend it means it is important.”
Jared’s mind reeled as he adjusted from what he thought they were planning on doing to how to detonate the weapons depot. He ignored the craziness of the suggestion and focused on how to accomplish it. And live. He’d finally married his long time partner, and he really wanted to enjoy that a bit longer.
“We need something to protect the troops up here, and something to set off the bunker,” Jared responded. “Something strong on both accounts.”
“That is why I wanted shields on the dactyls,” Arinna replied. “We can move the transports farther from the blast zone and use their engines as generators to create power for a large shield.”
“It doesn’t bother you this will be the first use of the shield outside of testing?” Jared asked. It made him nervous.
“Not as much as fighting the FLF on two fronts or leaving them a bunker full of weapons. A really big bunker full of lots of weapons based on the schematics. Here,” she said, pulling out a map showing the upper level of the bunker and pointing to a spot near the tree line far from where the main fighting had been. “The ventilation system runs close to the old natural gas lines and down to a small room next to the main storage area.”
She flipped to the schematic with the deeper levels of the bunker roughly mapped out.
“Should be easy to fill with gas,” Jared said, wishing he could think of an argument why it wouldn’t work. But Arinna hadn’t gotten them killed yet and it had been a long and deadly war. “Too bad we can’t just pump in carbon monoxide and knock them out.”
Arinna hesitated before shaking her head. “We only have one chance at this. God knows what they have in there, but I’m sure it includes gas masks and fire suppressant. Which is why we need one good trigger to set the whole place off.”
“Gabriella and I will create the detonator. Should be ready in an hour,” Jared said.
“We’ll start the troop movement then and use it as a screen to mask work on the gas line. It should take a few hours for the room to fill for maximum potential ... damn, we’ll be cutting it close.” Arinna swore. “I should have just blown it the first day.”
“And miss time together in the field?” Jared drawled, earning a faint smile. “Come on, you know we wouldn’t risk using the shields if we hadn’t run out of options.”
“True, and speaking of options, I want you in your dactyl back with the transports. I’ll stay within range and detonate the trigger.”
“No,” Jared said, stomach twisting.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
They stared each other down, Jared fighting his instincts to obey her order. A year ago he would have followed her without question, even if he didn’t like it. But since the spring, leading the Guard had become far more of an equally shared responsibility. Jared no longer felt he had to agree without question.
“You have to give me a good reason for that,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the desk. He wasn’t leaving until this was worked out.
Arinna took a long breath, but the tension went out of her as she looked away. Which at least meant she wasn’t going to yell at him. “Because I trust the shield. I found it originally, helped design it, and can handle a problem if one comes up. But you’re right. We don’t know what is down there. Both of us being here is risky enough. I won’t have you sitting on top of the depot with me when it blows.”
Jared held her gaze another heartbeat, then swore. “Fine,” he said, uncrossing his arms. “I still don’t like it but you did just rationalize why it can’t be one of the Lieutenants sitting in a shielded dactyl instead. Not that having a problem with the ones protecting the troops isn’t just as big of an issue.”
Arinna’s lips twisted in a dry smile. “Yes, but you and they will be farther from the blast, and should be able to survive it shieldless. The shields will simply help with unknowns.”
“The whole bloody thing is an unknown,” Jared said, raising a hand when he saw Arinna ready to reply. “I’m off to work on setting up the trigger before we make this any closer than it is going to be.”
So many things about this mission felt off. Jared didn’t know where to start on the problems, but he promised himself he wouldn’t spook himself over superstitions that things would go poorly. If the attack in Prague, the first since the war had ended on European soil almost four years before, hadn’t been bad enough and been the initiator for the attack on the depot, needing Byran’s permission to go ate at Jared. Byran, whose life Arinna had saved in the bombings and was someone Arinna claimed love for, and his first act as Prime Minister had been to bring the Guard to heel.
Arinna was still tight lipped about what had happened in the new Prime Minister’s office other than to say Byran had forced Derrick into a role as Secretary of Defense in order to approve the Guard attack on the FLF depot. That she wouldn’t comment more than that told Jared she was still pissed, and unlike most problems hadn’t found a solution. This wasn’t MOTHER who she could ignore or threaten. It was also a problem that waited for them back in Prague. First, they needed to blow up a massive underground weapons depot and survive. Jared put his mind on that.
Lieutenant Gabriella Faronelli had worked in Italian Intelligence before the war. She had a penchant for explosives. It made Jared wonder what Italian Intelligence had been doing before the world went to shit, but that hardly mattered now. What was important was she could craft a remote detonation device in under half an hour. That left the natural gas.
Outside the transport plane where he’d been working with Gabriella, the sun had set. A low hum vibrated through the fleet of boxy planes as their configuration altered from defensive stationary units to mobile. Wings unfolded as engines warmed up. Troops were already loading. Jared scooted to where Arinna organized the relocation near the back hatch of her dactyl.
He handed her the trigger. “I’m going to go place the detonator and reroute the gas line,” he said.
Arinna almost said no, then paused. “I know better than to argue with you and we need to get this done. I’ll be in my dactyl to offer cover. And Captain, don’t go alone,” she said. He didn’t need her to say that nothing about this mission sat well with her either.
Lieutenants Assad and Faronelli were needed to organize the relocation and prepare for defense as the FLF convoy drew closer. Jared wished briefly that Derrick was with them before finding two other soldiers to tag along.
The gas lines were north of the depot, far enough away that he moved his dactyl closer, just in case they needed a hasty exit. The only thing that proved easy on the entire mission came when he made it to the network of pipes. The system was old, from at least the 1980s. Jared stared at the bolts on the flanges and wondered why he’d brought a cutting torch. When he yarded on the rusted mess, he expected it to be stuck. He nearly fell over when the entire seam gave way from a poor weld. He had to keep himself from laughing.
Rerouting the gas into the ventilation system proved no more difficult than affixing a flexible hose. Once he was sure the system worked, he placed the detonator. When it exploded the flames would follow the gas to the room below with hopefully enough force to start a chain reaction.
“In place,” Jared said into the comm when he was back in his dactyl. “Moving to join the troops.”
“You have command,” Arinna replied. “I’m going into silent for the duration.”
That crashed the elation he’d felt. Jared waited until his dactyl was settled to offer a protective shield for his third of the troops and he was alone before calling Command in Prague. Ostensibly it was to warn them of the operation, but Jared knew he didn’t want to be chasing the thoughts in his head alone for the next three hours. Chief Communications Officer Kehm Racée liked the news even less than Jared, but didn’t argue. He secured a video channel and double checked the satellites. Which was how he saw the FLF had closed in a lot faster than expected.
“I hope you are ready to use the shields because you have company coming one click out,” Kehm reported.
“This is going to get interesting very quickly,” Jared warned his two Field Lieutenants.
“We can push them back, Captain,” Gabriella offered.
“No! You can’t move the dactyls or the transports. Everything needs to stay put for the shields to work.” Jared glanced down at his clock. “Plus, we need to stay this way for another two hours.”
Farrak swore, which Jared was fairly certain was a first. “Two hours, sir?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
Sporadic gunfire became a pitched battle by the end of the first hour. They couldn’t move the transports, but they could move soldiers. As long as the troops didn’t get too far and could return immediately. The situation was tense, with long range fire coming from the depot and the tip of the FLF mobile army setting up on their other side. If there wasn’t a plan to deal with at least one of the two problems facing them, Jared would have been far more anxious. Instead, he just hoped the plan worked. Then he got too busy to worry.
“Five minutes, Captain,” Kehm warned over the comm.
Jared blinked, uncertain where the last hour had gone except in offering continuous fire from his dactyl, while ordering troops to fill any hole in the line. There wasn’t even time to swear.
He gave the order for all troops to pull back into the transports and checked the GPS location of each. The transports were the generators. The dactyls held the shield technology. But the shields were only so big and centered around each dactyl. To fit everyone and everything in resembled a jigsaw puzzle made out of army pieces, 3D army pieces. If the spacing was a little off the shield would cut through a transport literally and figuratively. The shields protected by obliterating anything that crossed them. But everything was in place. Jared glanced to see how close to the depot Arinna’s dactyl lay and that no FLF had disturbed it. Before he could, the ground rumbled.
A spout of fire erupted to the north of the complex. That meant the detonator had been triggered. He waited a panicked second for the roomful of gas in the depot to ignite and spark off the munitions housed next to it. A rumble burst into what looked and felt like an underground volcano exploding. Dirt and flames shot skyward, ripping in a widening circle to envelope the building on the surface. Jared flinched as rocks fell earthward. None touched the planes.