The Battle for Lashmere Page 5

  “Good. Let me know when Stalwart has its sensor net up. I want to see what the Woduur do.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A few minutes later, the sensor net was operational. The greatly enhanced sensor range allowed them to see the approaching Woduur ships. They were pursuing at the same relatively leisurely pace they’d set from Lashmere to Buckman’s Star.

  “Too bad they seem so easily able to track us through our point to point transits,” Woodard said.

  “Agreed,” Stokes said. “What do you think of trying to hide a jump from the Woduur, Miss Woodard?”

  “I think it might be impossible. If they are tracking us using the technique Captain Kri’s crew came up with or anything similar, we might not be able to mask it.”

  “But a strong enough magnetic field could mask us from their sensors.”

  “Yes, sir, but the only things strong enough to emit such a field is a red giant star or a singularity. The other problem is that we’d have to be close. Very.”

  “How close, Miss Woodard?”

  “I’m not sure without running a simulation, but my gut tells me too close. I’m not sure it would be possible.”

  “Get to work on it while we complete this series of hops. We can refuel and plan a new series to a compatible red giant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Woodard said.

  “How long until our cool down cycle is complete, Mister Bendel?”

  “Another six minutes, sir,” Bendel responded.

  “Excellent. ETA to Woduur arrival?”

  “That’s the better news. Unless they pick up the pace, they’ll start falling pretty far behind us. They won’t even arrive for another fourteen minutes.”

  “That is good news,” Stokes said. He had been worried that the Woduur would use their ridiculously fast FTL system to hound them until they either made a mistake or their ships broke down from being pushed too hard. “I wonder why they aren’t travelling at their maximum velocity.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing, sir,” Bendel said. “If they were going flat-out, we would have less than fifteen minutes to cool down our drives and make the next hop. They’d have us as at our first refueling stop.”

  “It does make me wonder,” Stokes said.

  “Sir, they’ve just sped up. ETA to our position is now nine minutes. It’s still not the highest speed we’ve seen them use, but they’re going a lot faster.”

  “Of course,” Stokes said. He sighed. “Send out the jump calculations and have Stalwart recall the sensor drone net. We’ll make this hop as soon as the drives are cooled down.”

  “Aye, sir.” The Woduur ships on the plot didnt slow down at the edge of the system as they usually did, but bored in dirrectly towards the remaining human fleet. One of the ring ships must have hit an asteroid or comet because it exploded near the edge of the system. The remaining ten ships barreled in and stopped at point blank range. Stokes watched in shock as the ten lethal, beautiful ships formed up and began to close on his position.

  Stokes bolted out of his chair and ordered, “All ships jump immediately!” Just as he finished the order, one of the destroyers vaporized. The ring ships turned in unison and started moving towards the Victorious. “Time to jump, Mister Bendel?

  “Thirty seconds, sir.”

  “All ships begin evasive maneuvers. Scatter formation. Don’t give them a single target to follow en masse.”

  “Orders sent, sir,” Bendel’s voice had an edge of fear in it. There was a long pause, in which Stokes was sure at least one more of his ships would be annihilated, but instead, he heard Bendel’s voice. “The fleet is jumping out, now, sir.”

  “Follow them out, Exec,” Stokes said. He relaxed into his command chair slightly. Only thirty-eight warships left, not counting the stealth corvettes and salvage rings. One way or another, Stokes was going to make the Woduur pay for all the lives they seemed intent on taking. As the Victorious slipped through its ring, he said, “I’m going to get these guys no matter what it takes.”

  Chapter 6

  Sergeant Valencia lined up his shot carefully. The Woduur were fast, too fast, once they knew where you were. The rifle boomed out and recoil impacted his shoulder. The lead Woduur soldier dropped to the ground. There were four more Woduur in the patrol. They surged forward, their slender metal legs flashing in the late afternoon sun.

  He heard Cooper’s rifle boom out a few seconds later and a second Woduur dropped and started thrashing and writhing. Thin blue fluid seeped from a jagged hole near the base of its neck. The three Woduur still standing brought their rifles up without slowing and started firing on Valencia’s position. Shots impacted on the rubble near his head. He quickly dropped down to the base of the half-tumbled wall he had been using for cover. Cooper dropped next to him.

  “Are the proximity charges set?” Valencia asked

  A young man, reed thin and with a thick Karn accent nodded and said, “They are. Let’s get out of here before they trip them.”

  The three men took off running away from the quickly approaching Woduur soldiers. A few seconds later, the was a powerful WHUMP of the charges going off behind them. Valencia threw himself to the ground and then rolled over, bringing his rifle up to check behind them.

  A single enemy tottered around the corner, three of its legs broken and sparks coming from a twisted stump that had once been its right arm. Valencia held his breath and gently stroked the trigger of his rifle. The creature’s head popped, and it dropped to the street.

  “We better get moving, Coop. The noise will bring another patrol soon.”

  “Sure will, Sarge. Let’s go, Nate.”

  The Karn civilian nodded and fell in with the two Marines. He had a heavy pistol in his hand. He flicked the small switch to check the charge.

  “You know you’ll burn half the charge in that pistol before one of those things goes down, don’t you?” Valencia asked.

  “Aye, but better this than a stick or a rock. Get me one of those slug throwers you got, and I’ll be happy to put the pistol away.”

  Cooper, who had moved up about ten meters suddenly dropped and held up a clenched fist. Valencia and Nate stopped and crouched next to a building that had once been an art museum. The ornate façade had been knocked free by the impact of the Woduur ring ship landing on Istyul City.

  Cooper crab-walked forward a few steps, moving quietly and keeping his rifle at the ready. He slowly peered around the corner of the building. He turned and looked at Valencia. He held up a thumb, then all five fingers and Valencia nodded. One unit of five enemies. Cooper then held up one finger and flashed all five fingers four times, followed by two fingers. Twenty-two prisoners. Way too big of a group for them to bring halfway across the area inside the ring to their makeshift headquarters under the ruins of the city hospital. They might be able to get ten or twelve back without a problem, but any more made it increasingly likely they would be detected. The suit sensors weren’t strong enough to completely block out such a large group.

  Valencia shook his head and motioned Cooper to move back. Nate grabbed his arm and whispered harshly, “You aren’t going to leave them, are you?”

  Valencia tried to keep his whisper soft and even. “I don’t have a choice. Twenty-two is way too many to get across the city unnoticed. They have sensors. Even with the jamming in our armor, the most we could move is maybe fifteen.”

  “Then let them go their own way. Kill the bastards that have them, at least,” Nate whispered back.

  Cooper, who had crept up to them said, “It’s a bad angle, Sarge. We’ll hit as many civvies as we do enemies.”

  Valencia nodded. “Too dangerous. Withdraw.”

  Nate snarled silently at him for a few seconds but said no more. The trio moved quietly through the streets. Some areas were nearly untouched, except for the burn marks of Woduur weapons fire. Other areas were crumbled ruins, filled with annihilated buildings from heavy fighting.

  Valencia’s hadn’t been with the only, or
the most heavily armed, unit in Istyul City, but he hadn’t found many other survivors from the Marine detachment. Twenty-one soldiers were with him, along with seventy odd civilians, mostly rescued from Woduur patrols.

  Valencia hadn’t been inside the Woduur ship since that first day. The patrols were too heavy, and the area just inside the ship had been quickly cleared of all structures. The resulting fifty meters of flat ground was a no man’s land, where any who dared enter was quickly killed by automated turrets or Woduur patrols.

  The trip back to the headquarters took another thirty minutes of careful movement. Once inside, Nate forgot all about being careful.

  “Just leave all those poor people to the tender mercies of the Woduur, eh, boy? Where’s your oath to protect the civilians, now?”

  “Look, Nate. I appreciate how you feel, but twenty-two people is more than we could have brought back. Our jammers can’t cover that many people. We don’t have enough room. Hell, we don’t even have enough food for the people here now, much less twenty-two more.”

  “So just off to be experimented on, tortured and killed, eh?” Nate waved his hands about in frustration as he spoke.

  “Nate, I’m sorry. If we had tried to rescue them, we all would have been captured. Between the three of us, we’ve killed so many Woduur at this point; they would probably kill us on sight if they could.”

  In the days since the Woduur ship had landed, Valencia, along with Cooper, the other marines and the civilians they had rescued had ambushed at least three patrols a day and rescued anyone they could. This was the first time they had turned away from rescuing anyone.

  Nate sighed deeply and said, “Look, I know what you’re saying, I just hate that we have to let anyone be taken by these mechanical spider people at all.”

  Nate and Valencia’s disagreement had attracted a few others from the small group, standing around the periphery of the conversation. Valencia turned and addressed the gathered people. “I don’t want anyone getting any ideas or starting any stupid rumors. We had to let a patrol take twenty-two captives. That was more than we could handle with our jammers. If we’d had time to set up a proper ambush, maybe it could have been done, but they were already moving away from us by the time we had a handle on the situation. We’ll keep killing as many of them as we can. In the meantime, what’s the situation on food and power?” Most of their energy was spent scavenging for food. Ninety people ate a remarkable amount of food.

  Eric Skorn, a Sergeant, but still junior to Valencia said, “We got into that supermarket half a click to the east. It was pretty picked over, but we got enough food to last us a week or so. We also ran across a small group of Karn civvies. They came back with us. Let me introduce you to them.”

  Valencia nodded and motioned Skorn to lead the way. They wove through the crowded basement. Skorn stopped at one of the many repurposed patient rooms and knocked once before swinging the door open.

  Inside the room were four men, all with graying hair and heavily wrinkled faces. All four of them held long, heavy projectile rifles. Valencia took a step into the room and said, “My name is Sergeant Valencia. I’m in command of this base. Sergeant Skorn tells me you’ve been fighting the Woduur. What can you tell me?”

  The four Karn all exchanged a look, one Valencia recognized. It was the kind of look that made it apparent that these men had faced danger together. Whoever these men were, they were dangerous. Something about their rifles nagged at Valencia’s memory, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  One of the men stood and spoke with the soft, lilting Karn accent that predominated the southern coast. “Call me Floyd for now, Sergeant. My team and I are currently operating against the invaders. We are also working on developing a network of safe havens. Can we count your base among them?”

  Valencia turned the question over in his mind for a moment. “On two conditions.” The man nodded before Valencia continued. “First, as long as you are on my base, you acknowledge that it is me in command until and unless I am relieved by a higher authority in my chain of command. Second, you agree to maintain the safety and security of this base.”

  Once again, all four men shared a shared glance with one another. Floyd said, “It’s agreed.”

  “Good, now that that’s settled, what can you tell me about yourselves?”

  “As you may suspect, my men and I are veterans of the war. We were all in the same unit. Did you fight in the war, son?”

  Valencia resisted the urge to bristle at being called son by Floyd. The man was, after all, probably old enough to be his grandfather. “I never made it to the front. My first two years were spent in combat training, and then I served as a logistics coordinator for one of the supply depots. I didn’t see any real combat until these Woduur landed.”

  Floyd chuckled silently and said, “Logistics. The most unappreciated of skills. An army marches on its stomach. Never forget that.”

  Something in the man’s mannerisms still irritated Valencia, so he decided to change the subject. “Those are interesting rifles you have there. Would you mind if I took a look at one of them?”

  The look Floyd gave him almost made him step back involuntarily. “When you take it from my cold, dead hands you can look at it. Not until then, son.” Although his tone had never changed, the look in his eyes and the looks on the rest of the men’s faces made him decide to drop that particular line of questioning and revise his estimate of the quartet from dangerous to very dangerous.

  “Well, I apologize, then. You and your men are welcome here, so long as you adhere to the rules I’ve laid out for you.” Valencia firmed his features and hoped his voice was as steady as he wanted it to be.

  Floyd nodded and said, “Fair enough. There are several other groups of people, organizing and trying to fight these… what did you call them? Woduur?” Valencia nodded. Floyd continued. “Four groups about the size of this one and a dozen or so in single digits. How many have you got here, Sergeant? Seventy? Eighty?”

  “More than ninety, so far.”

  “Well, you might have the largest group we’ve found so far. Have you got a map of the area?”

  “I do, come to my command center.”

  Floyd shouldered his rifle and followed Valencia through the base to a room he had designated for all of his operations. Inside a map of Istyul City had been taped to a large table. The ring of the Woduur ship and the cleared zone had all been marked on it, along with any known blocked streets. Valencia was near the west end of the enclosed area. He had mostly ranged to the west towards the edge of the ring, trying to kill patrols and rescue civilians.

  Floyd looked the map over for a moment before reaching into his pocket. He pulled out several small balls of metal. Valencia recognized them as Woduur metal. Their joints were filled with ball bearings. The man started plunking the balls down on the map.

  “First, there’s a big group of Ebrim Marines up here in the north. Smaller group than yours, but more marines. Thirty-five or so marines and another twenty civvies.”

  “Lashmere Marines,” Valencia corrected.

  Floyd gave him a hard look and said, “You say it your way, I’ll say it mine. Anyway, there’s another small group of marines over here.” He plunked down another bearing. “These guys have a lot of food and about fifteen fighting men. Maybe thirty civvies. Two other groups here and here,” two more bearings placed on the table, “That’s the last of the groups with soldiers. All the rest are civilian only.” He reached into his pocket and pulled a small pencil out. He marked a bunch of X’s indicating the locations.

  Floyd said, “That’s everyone I know about.” He started making small circles with the pencil. “There’s good supplies, food and stuff in these areas. Most of the houses are stripped bare. I’ve been trying to cache some supplies, but so far, we’ve been making it mostly hand to mouth. We’ve been ranging all over the city since that thing landed. No good way to approach it. We’ll have to bleed these invaders until they give up. How many have you ta
ken down?”

  Valencia said, “Eighty-three so far. We try to ambush about three patrols a day. I have a demolitions expert here who helps set up mines and tripwires.”

  Something that might have been a glimmer of respect entered Floyd’s eyes. “Useful,” was all he said.

  “Yes, well, he’s actually a construction worker, but he is an expert at setting up explosives.”

  “We’ll be going, now, I think,” Floyd said. He started walking back to the room where the rest of his team was waiting.

  Valencia followed and said, “Before you go, do you mind if I ask, what did you do during the war?”

  Floyd stopped and turned to face Valencia. He searched the younger man’s face for a few long seconds before he said, “I killed the enemy, just like everyone else. That’s what you do in war.” He turned and marched into the room where his men were waiting. Valencia stood, staring at the door for a moment before giving himself a shake.

  Floyd’s mannerisms were unsettling. He looked at everyone like he was sizing up how best to put a bullet in them. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Floyd escorted his men out of the hospital basement.

  As soon as Floyd had left, Cooper caught Valencia’s attention. “Sarge, do you know who that was?”

  “No, who?”

  “You really don’t know?” Cooper seemed incredulous.

  “I already told you, no, I don’t. Stop playing games, Coop. Spill it.”

  “That was Floyd McCandless. The sniper. That gun he’s carrying? That’s the Mk-093 he racked up over seven hundred kills with during the war. That guy’s a legend.”

  Valencia gaped at Cooper. “You can’t be serious. The most dangerous sniper in history just walked out of my base?”

  Cooper nodded. “Yep, that was him.”

  Valencia suppressed a shudder. “I’m glad he’s on our side this time.”

  Chapter 7

  Ktenu’s morning as the sole commander of the Alliance military had been busy. With the others in the Lashmere system getting the human problem under control, he had been inundated with tasks normally handled by his fellow commanders. He sat alone at the head of the half circle table in the public council chamber. The opulent chamber, which usually brought Ktenu a sense of peace and belonging, only seemed to weigh on him that day.