Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel (18 page)

Reinforcements

As consciousness returned, Flint ripped away his helmet and rubbed at the spot where the bullet had been stopped from making his skull into a soup bowl but not all of the bullet’s kinetic energy had been absorbed by the helmet. A good portion of that force had been transferred directly to his skull. It hurt like hell and there was a huge goose egg forming beneath his short-cropped brown hair but no blood. That was something to light a smoke about.

“How the hell did they get the drop on us, sir?” Morrison asked as he stood facing the burning store that the snipers had taken their shots from, just waiting to see something move so he could kill it.

“They got the drop on us because mother fragging Drake isn’t here watching our asses like he usually does,” Flint said.

“Yeah,” Morrison agreed. “Where the hell is Drake? I haven’t seen him since that missile took out the combat car he was on. I'm starting to think they got his ass.”

“Would you forget about Drake?” Flint growled. “We've got other things to worry about right now, starting with those two ER Infantry pricks that just turned most of us into piles of hamburger.”

The anger in Flint’s voice shut the soldier up quickly. “I’m going to call in some support for us. Now if it’s not too much trouble, Morrison, would you stop standing there with your dick in your hand and try to figure out which way those bastards went? I want those two dead before the sun goes down!”

As Morrison leapt to obey his orders, Flint gently placed his damage helmet back on his head and activated the com inside of it. To his surprise, it was still functioning. “Drake,” he snarled into it, “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, or where you are but I want you back with us ASAP. Understood?”

There was no reply. Flint rubbed his chin with the back of his hand while he waited for a response. He knew the possibility existed that Drake could be dead. His helmet’s flickering HUD did not show him anywhere in the vicinity. Not even a super soldier like Drake was immortal, but somehow Flint doubted the missile had sent him to the beyond.

Lighting up a smoke, Flint started salvaging ammo and a better helmet from the remains of his fallen squad as he called company H.Q. and requested reinforcements. As Flint waited on their support to arrive, he hoped that Drake would show up soon. If he had been with them, the snipers would have been dead before they had even been able to fire a shot.

Finding Zach’s corpse, he sifted through his gear to get at the happy juice their combat lifesaver carried. As he injected the analgesic into the side of his neck, the pain immediately began to go away, replaced by a warm feeling. Knowing the seriousness of the hit to the head he had taken, he also took a pill designed to help ward off the effects of a concussion. Then he stowed the gear in his own pack. While it was against regulation to do so, Flint didn’t much care. Having his own portable drug store available to him was better than relying on someone else’s and he could always trade the contents for smokes.

Within ten minutes, but what had felt like an eternity to Flint, the sleek black low and narrow profile of an atmospheric troop transport roared in. With its VTOL capability it deposited another dozen Coalition troops that had been deployed to reinforce his numbers. He hated getting reinforced in the middle of a fight as he didn’t know the capabilities of each individual soldier but it was better than not being reinforced at all.

Morrison’s best guess was that the two ER Infantry had headed south. That was fine with Flint. Regardless of which direction they headed out in, there were more people to kill and damage to be done along the way.

Earth was a big planet after all.

Under Siege

Admiral Clarkson was uncomfortable in the combat armor he was required to wear. As far as he was concerned, he was an Officer in the fleet, not some bloody mud sucking ground pounder, and his personal comfort was not to be denied. However, he could not and would not take it off. As much as he despised it, he was asking his people to wear it, and being a consummate leader, he knew never to ask his people to do anything he was unable, or unwilling to do himself.

Word of the President’s apparent death had quickly spread throughout the command and had shaken the remaining military forces to their very core. Damn the idiot who had leaked the news to the troops! The bad news had arrived via secure channel from the Earth Republic Fleet battle group just before it had been decimated overhead. So it was probably some shocked aid or functionary who had heard him and General Temple listen to the news on the vid and then ran off in a panic to spread the demoralizing news.

The news of the President’s demise, as sure as hell was hot and space was cold, hadn’t been leaked by General Temple as a random Coalition round had shattered the briefing rooms large window and his head as well. Clarkson had ordered everyone out of the room, then respectfully arranged the General’s body on the floor rather than slumped over the table as it had been. Clarkson looked at the corpse of Jackson Temple and wished for the millionth time that the man were still alive. The admiral was trained and meant to guide ships of the Fleet, not men and women of the infantry, but you didn’t always get to choose your command and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen this one as he looked out the shattered window at the Coalition forces below.

Truly, it was a siege.

Thousands of Coalition soldiers accompanied by a company of tanks had surrounded Alpha Base within an hour of the initial wave of Coalition shock troops touching down on Earth’s surface. Apparently, the Coalition saw the Earth Armed Forces command center as a target of worth. “I can’t imagine why,” he thought sarcastically.

Alpha Base had been designed to hold off such an assault and it was the largest concentration of military power left on Earth. So far, its sheer number of veteran personnel and stockpile of firepower was keeping the Coalition at bay, but Clarkson knew that it would not last.

Eventually, the Coalition would break through its defenses and the base would be quickly overrun, but not before they had paid with blood for every inch of ground they took.

Clarkson’s eyes were bloodshot and he looked every inch as exhausted as he felt. He rubbed at his forehead as his tired eyes scanned over the latest batch of intelligence reports for the third time. Alpha Base was in contact with numerous other installations that were still holding on, but most of them were equally as pinned down as he was here.

If there were any large, operational mobile units left out there, they sure as hell were keeping their heads down and not responding. Clarkson didn’t blame them. If he had found himself in their place, he would have likely been doing the same thing.

Any damage they could inflict upon the Coalition’s superior number of forces on their own was better than trying to rally and getting massacred. As the Coalition controlled the space overhead, he knew that when the Coalition got a fix on their location, any group large enough to be seen as a threat would be wiped out. Of course, that left him and those under his command at Alpha Base with no hope of immediate assistance or resupply. However, supplies shouldn’t be a problem with the amount of firepower the Coalition was sending after their tiers of defenses and those defending them they would probably run out of men to pull triggers before they ran out of bullets to fire.

Outside the walls of Alpha Base, artillery shells burst upon reactive armor, the echoing explosions leaving the ears of all troops in the immediate area ringing.

Machine guns barked and chattered constantly.

Good men and women were screaming and dying all around him.

All this happened just to buy him time. To give him the chance to find a way to turn the tide of battle or at least to scratch out a means of escaping from the hell that was closing in on them. Clarkson shook his head sadly. The only real hope Earth had rested somewhere in the stars beyond its atmosphere. The point where Earth could save itself was long past. The admiral had to admit that he could think of no other option other than to fight to the last.

Clarkson drew himself up, squaring his shoulders and leaving his solitude behind, he grabbed his rifle and slung it over his shoulder before he marched back into the chaos of Alpha Base’s command center.

Tribulation

Drake had stayed on the move since he regained consciousness. The nanobots had healed him up better than he was before he’d taken the leap from the combat car. It had even taken care of that annoying bit of arthritis he had developed in his neck and taken the accumulated tar of hundreds of cartons of cigarettes out of his lungs, probably removing a few cancerous tumors while they were at it. In addition, his right knee and ankle no longer ached and grinded with every step. He felt thirty years younger though his outward appearance hadn’t changed much. The nanobots were designed to fix damage, not give you good looks.

He tried to tell himself that he was ready to dish out some serious payback. In reality, his capacity to desire revenge had died long ago, and he knew it. He already passed up more than a dozen opportunities to kill more members of the Earth’s Armed Forces. Though he had plenty of ammo and could have easily cut them down, he just kept to the shadows and kept moving.

He had fought too many wars and killed too many soldiers and civilians to feel any kind of real rage at, or any other emotion for that matter, his current so-called enemies. Perhaps that’s what made him a superior soldier. He didn’t fight for revenge or honor or even glory. He fought because it was all he knew and he was damn good at it. While his body still supplied him with adrenaline, his mind just didn’t care anymore. His life had become a never-ending cycle of line up target, kill target and repeat. That kind of thinking had helped make up his mind to rejoin the regular Coalition ground pounders. At least with them he had more opportunity to do what he was good at and do it often.

All of this crap was pointless.

Even if the Coalition did their worst to the Earth, as they certainly would, there would still be the other scattered worlds of the Republic to deal with. After them, yet another sentient species would be found by the Executive Board of the Coalition, in some corner of the galaxy, that needed to be destroyed and Drake would be sent along to destroy them too.

Drake couldn’t honestly say he didn’t give a damn about anything, other than self-preservation, anymore. An Earth bullet penetrating his skull would seem a lot like a personal favor right now. The Great Beyond, that was death, couldn’t be any darker or colder than he already felt inside, and if he was dead at least he could finally stop the killing. However, finding an Earth Republic Infantryman up to the challenge of taking him down wasn’t going to be easy because he simply couldn’t just give up and let them kill him. As tired of the fight as he was, it just wasn’t in his nature to lay down his weapon and die.

The area of the city he was in was still active with small groups of ER Infantry roaming about picking off those like him using guerilla tactics and sheer desperation to make whatever difference they could. Some had even joined up with small groups of unarmored but armed civilians who couldn’t be evacuated before the Coalition forces rolled through. He had to admire their fighting spirit. Most of them probably hadn’t seen combat since the mandatory service the Earth Republic put all of its citizens through but there they were rifles in hand ready to die for their Republic as long as they got the chance to take a few of the Coalition down with them.

He’d heard Flint call for him to return to his unit a few minutes back and was en route to their location, tracing Flint’s com signal. He really didn’t know why he was following Flint’s request to join them. It was just that he didn’t have anything better to do and standing still wasn’t like him. Drake’s equipment was far above standard issue and that included his com gear. He swerved as he ran and headed down an alleyway that his GPS showed as a short cut that would easily cut in half the time it would take him to reach Flint and the others. According to the GPS data, Flint was less than two miles away and moving quickly in his direction.

Drake rounded a corner and smashed directly into a pretty young girl wearing Earth Republic Infantry armor. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The impact knocked Drake’s rifle from his clutches. It skidded across the street out of reach. Straddling her on his knees, he ripped the girl‘s weapon from her hands and raised it over her head to start to smash in her forehead with its butt, just as he noticed they weren’t alone.

The Earth girl had a friend with her.

Another young lady, also in uniform, had her own rifle muzzle aimed at his face from a few yards away. Drake threw himself sideways, rolling off the first girl, as the second one fired. The round grazed the side of his cheek drawing a small streak of red. Scrambling to her knees, the first girl flung herself at him. A clenched fist smashed into left side of his skull. Drake took the impact and used it to whirl about, planting the heel of his palm into the end of her nose.

Blood sprayed from her nostrils on impact painting her face with streaks of blood that made her look as if she had a cat’s whiskers. Reeling backwards, she fell on her back, bouncing the back of her helmet off the pavement.

Her friend let loose another shoot.

The round ricocheted off the pavement near Drake as he rolled to his feet. Out of instinct, his hand went for the pistol holstered on his belt but caught himself at the last second. “Why?” he thought, “Why kill them?” Splaying his hands open, he slowly raised his hands to show they were empty, but refused to raise them any higher than his chest.

These were just kids and Drake knew there was no need to kill either of the girls and add them to his already overflowing ledger.

They clearly didn’t feel the same way about him as the second girl fired a third time.

The round slashed over the top of Drake’s right thigh as he spun trying to dodge it. He collapsed, playing dead, hoping the girl was as much of a rookie as he thought she was, and would take the bait.

She did.

She rushed to tower over him for her final shot, shoving the barrel of her rifle into his face. He grabbed the barrel, jerking it aside, as it spat a round into the street. Sparks flew as the bullet ricocheted away.

Drake held on firmly to the barrel and popped it back towards the girl, catching her in the mouth with the butt stock, splitting her lip. Ripping the rifle from the girl’s weakened grasp, he gave her a quick kick in the stomach. Her breath left her as she folded over as Drake flipped the butt of the rifle up again, catching her under the chin and violently snapping her head back. She flopped hard onto her back and lay still.

The first girl was up again though and this time there was an auto-pistol in her hands pointed at him.

“Freeze!” she warned him. He couldn't tell if she was shaking from fear, blood loss, or just plain adrenaline.

Drake sighed and raised his hands over his head. “Look, kid, I could’ve killed you both, and I think you know that. So why don't you cut me some fragging slack.”

“I didn’t see it go down that way,” the girl told him. “To me, you got lucky or you wouldn’t still be breathing right now. Either way, get on your knees and keep your hands behind your head.”

Drake complied with her barked orders as she edged her way closer to her friend to check on her.

“Aren’t you a little young to be a soldier, girl?” Drake asked.

“I’m eighteen and I already killed a few score of you Coalition bastards today. Keep flapping your gums, old man, and I'll gladly add another hash mark to my weapon,” she growled at him. Watching her carefully, he saw her realize her friend wasn’t any more hurt than a split lip.

Her attention focused completely on him once more. “You don’t look like the others. What the hell are you? Are you some kind of mercenary? You’re certainly not standard infantry.”

Drake laughed. “I guess you could say I’m special operations.”

The girl’s lips tightened as she gave him a look of disbelief. “Then what the hell are you doing here, all by yourself? What’s your mission?”

“I don’t have one at the moment. I was returning to meet up with the unit that’s apparently after you.”

Beside her, the other girl stirred with a pained moan and rolled over onto her side, pushing herself up with her hand.

The one with the pistol trained on him kept her eyes locked on him but she asked, “You okay, Abigail?”

“I’ll live,” Abigail answered. “Who is this frigging jerk?”

“My name is Drake,” he told her. “And to be honest with you, if you’re planning on killing me, do me a favor, just do it and get it over with. I don’t have time for kids’ games, and you two sure as hell will never get me to divulge anything I don't want you to know.”

“Kids’ games?” Abigail asked as she rolled over onto her buttocks. “This one is kind of full of himself, ain’t he, Dinah?”

The girl with the pistol just asked, “What are we going to do with him, Abby? We can’t just let him go.”

“We kill him.”

Dinah shook her head. “Uh-Uh. Then we wouldn’t be any better than the rest of the Coalition bastards like him. I will not consider shooting an unarmed old man who is on his knees.”

Abigail got pissed and snapped, “He just said he’s special ops. I can promise you, this fuckers armed, weapon or not. Besides, we can’t just let him go."

“Whatever you and your girlfriend here plan on doing, I suggest you make up your fragging minds and do it quickly. The unit that has been tracking you is closing in fast. They’re less than a couple of blocks away now.”

“And we should believe you why?” Abigail snapped at him.

“Believe what you want, little sister, but in a couple minutes, you two are going to be outnumbered by six to one. Tell me, you have likely seen what they do to women, is that what you really want?”

“I don’t think he’s lying, Abby,” Dinah said.

“Fine,” Abby snarled. She picked up her rifle and got ready to use its butt to knock him unconscious.

“No,” Drake told her, snapping his hands out as if to shield himself, “Try it and you’re a dead little girl.”

The ice in his voice made Abigail stop short of him.

“Look, I got nothing against you two girls. I have nothing left to gain in life by taking your lives, so I’m willing to live and let live if you are. Just leave and I’ll cut out of here without a word to the guys that are coming about your location and where you’re headed. Deal?”

“Deal,” Dinah answered before Abigail could respond.

Drake saw Abigail shoot her a glare that would have made hell seem like a vacation compared to it.

“Go on!” Drake ordered them. “Get the hell out of here.”

The two girls took off, the one named Dinah glancing warily back at him over her shoulder as they ran. Drake picked up his rifle and faded quickly into the shadows of the alleyway as Flint and the others of his unit could be heard drawing closer in the distance.

***

Morrison had found a spot of fresh blood on the pavement of the alleyway. They gambled that it belonged to the two Earth snipers that had taken a shot at them. Flint ordered them all to press on. He didn’t want to just catch up to them, he wanted to overtake them and get in front of them. The squad had triple timed it and Flint’s gamble paid off. Flint watched the two young girls from where he crouched behind the wreckage of an Earth tank. The rest of the squad was spread out in a classic L shaped ambush. Neither of the girls had a clue they were there and Flint allowed himself a devilish smile. One of the girls had a pressure bandage on her forehead and a busted nose that was still leaking blood down her face. The other girl had a swollen lip and her forearm was bandaged up, covering what appeared to be a much more significant wound.

They were both green. It was easy to see from the way they moved and carried themselves. They were running scared, and he knew it. How they had ever gotten the drop on him and his men was nothing short of a miracle on their part.

As they walked closer to where Flint hid, he called out to them, “Stop where you are! Drop your weapons and we may let you live.”

The girls panicked, swinging their rifles around, searching for targets. Flint clicked his com once, a burst of static signaling Morrison to give them a wake up call to the reality of their situation. Morrison’s rifle cracked from somewhere nearby. The already wounded girl cried out as her armor on her right thigh disintegrated. Spinning her around, she toppled, hard, to the street. The other girl opened up, firing a burst at where she must have thought the shot came from. Flint snickered at her inexperience.

“Drop it now!” he yelled. “Next time, he won’t be aiming to maim!”

Slowly, she lowered her weapon and reluctantly tossed it aside.

“What the hell are you doing?” the girl on the ground screamed. “They’re going to kill us anyway!”

“Shut up!” the girl told her friend and yanked her sidearm from its holster with just her fingertips, tossing it away as well before she marched over and ripped the rifle that her friend clutched from her hands. She threw it end over end down the street.

Content that it was safe, Flint revealed himself, stepping out from behind the wreckage. Smiling at the girls, waving the barrel of his own weapon casually at them. “Why don't you two ladies get on your knees?”

The girl with the busted nose complied. “We surrender,” she pleaded with tears in her eyes.

Flint motioned for the others to come out from their cover. Over a dozen of his men emerged into the street around the girls.