Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales Read online

  I hesitated, not sure I should really speak my mind. But this man deserved my honesty. “I agree with your misgivings, sir. I think we’re going into a hornet’s nest, and I’m afraid the scope of the campaign is far too broad. I don’t see us taking all the objectives, not without massive reinforcements. And I don’t see where those will come from.”

  I stopped for a minute again, really not sure I wanted to say everything that was on my mind. “General, I keep thinking what I would have done with those worlds if I was in command for the enemy, with all those years to ship in heavy weapons and build fortifications. All that time to put to use the lessons we’ve learned in this war. I wondered for a while why you accepted the scope of this operation. I couldn’t believe you were bullied into it, and it took me some time, but I think I figured it out.”

  He looked up at me and gazed right into my eyes. “And what did you come up with?”

  “That as difficult as this campaign will be, not doing it would be morally indefensible. Those are our people out there. We couldn’t defend them the first time, and to leave them there when we can credibly try to free them is not an option you could live with. Or one I could.”

  We were both silent a few seconds, then I added, “Of course, if the enemy was just occupying Washbalt instead, I’d be fine with it.”

  He tried to hold the laugh in, but it burst its way out anyway. “Now, now, major, you are expressing less than appropriate respect for our honest, hardworking politicians.”

  The laughing broke the tension for a minute, but there was something else on the general’s mind too, and I knew what it was.

  “You’re also worried about the South Americans, aren’t you?” I’d been thinking about it too.

  “You bet I am, he replied. “My gut tells me they’re going to jump into this storm. Think about it. They’re not blind. This war has been a huge escalation of the action in space. How long can they sit there with no open warp gates and let the rest of us grow? They’ve got to do something, and the cold hard fact is the systems they can steal from us are worth a lot more to them than anything they can snatch from the Caliphate or CAC. And if they come in, I’m willing to bet it will be a surprise, and our vaunted diplomats and intelligence services will be caught flat-footed.”

  “And with Sherman and the Gliese 250 defense force draining all our resources,” I said, “we’re weak everywhere else.”

  “Bingo. You are right on target. Even if I knew for a fact they were going to attack, I’m still not sure what I would do to meet it. We just can’t let our occupied systems languish under enemy control any longer without trying to liberate them, and we don’t have any strength to spare. We’re mobilized to the max already, and the navy is stretched thinner than we are. Even if Sherman is a success, it may bleed us badly and leave us weak and unable to meet a new threat. It could be the beginning of the war all over again.”

  He was right. But there was nothing we could do differently than we were doing anyway. Honestly, he was a man who shouldered every burden himself, and I think he just needed to talk about this. I thought after all he’d done the least he deserved was a little reassurance.

  “General, there’s no sense going around in circles. Sherman has to go forward, and there’s nothing else we can do that we haven’t done. So let’s focus on making this a successful op and also keep our eyes open. If we have to change plans or redeploy to meet another threat, we’ll do whatever is necessary. We always do.”

  He smiled appreciatively, and threw be an informal salute. “Welcome to I Corps, major. Operation Sherman will be commencing in nine days, so I’ll let you go get settled into your billet. I’m sure you’ll want all that time to work with your regiment. Rearrange things however you see fit. Any promotions, transfers—whatever—just let me know and I’ll approve them.”

  He stood up and snapped me a much sharper salute, which I returned just as crisply. Then he extended his hand and we shook before he walked me out. He ordered one of the aides in the outer room to show me to my quarters. The lieutenant jumped to attention and asked me to follow him. We walked outside and got into a waiting transport, and he drove me across the camp to the 3rd regiment’s section. The regimental camp was divided into two wings, one for each battalion, with a central area for regimental assets and the command section. We drove up to a large shelter in the center of the command area.

  “These are your quarters, Major Cain,” said the aide, whose name I hadn’t even thought to read off of the plate on his chest. God, I really was getting used to the thinner air at this pay grade, wasn’t I?. “I will have your kit delivered here immediately, and I will see that your command staff is aware that you have arrived. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  “Uh, no. That will be all.” I was still getting used to the obsequious servitude from junior officers. I rallied, though, and gave him my best major’s attitude. “Dismissed.”

  I walked inside and took a look around. I had a suite with sleeping and living areas, and an adjoining office with conference room. I was just about to see how hot I could get the shower when the AI announced that my orderly officer was at the door requesting to see me.

  I was just about to tell the AI to ask him … her?—I didn’t even know yet—to come back in an hour, but I decided to make time. I walked over to the desk and said, “Open.”

  The door slid open and a tall, dark-haired woman in a meticulous uniform walked into the room and gave me a very respectable salute. “Lieutenant Anne Delacorte reporting, sir. I have been assigned as your orderly.”

  I returned the salute—this was getting tedious—and motioned for her to take a seat. “Thank-you, Lieutenant. I am pleased to meet you.”

  We exchanged a few minutes of respectful pleasantries, very respectful on her part, and then got right into 45 minutes of deep discussion of how I wanted things run, what kind of schedule I kept, even what I liked for breakfast. She seemed like an intelligent and earnest young officer, eager to do her job well.

  Finally, I cut things off and said we’d get through the rest of it later. I told her to round up my executive officer, Jax, and the other battalion commander, and have them report to me. In an hour. I was going to get that hot shower first.

  On the way out I started to ask her to round up a couple sandwiches, but then I said, “Lieutenant, I’ll want dinner for myself and the other officers. Ninety minutes from now.”

  She acknowledged and raced off to tend to it all, while I used up half of Columbia’s hot water. Forty minutes later I was sitting behind my desk in a fresh uniform feeling a little more human. I browsed some of the dossiers on my workstation screen. Lieutenant Delacorte had uploaded the files of all of the personnel in the regiment. I didn’t need to read Jax’s file, I’d probably written half of it. There wasn’t an officer I trusted more to get up to speed quickly.

  My exec was Major Lis Cherzny, who actually had ten years longer service than I did. She’d been stuck in garrison duty for most of the war, so she never got the chance to show what she could do. After uneventful years as a lieutenant and more as a captain, she led a company in the Tail campaign and a battalion on the Outer Rim, winning the rapid advancement that had eluded her before.

  My second battalion head was Major Jackson Cantor, who’d been promoted to his position after commanding a company through the Outer Rim, fighting in every battle of the campaign, and ending up as acting battalion-exec.

  They all looked good to me on paper, and a few minutes later I got to reinforce that opinion. I’d been thinking a tray of sandwiches for us to eat while we got acquainted, but Lieutenant Delacorte somehow managed to gather up a spread that included a platter of Columbian seafood, a choice of soups, and rare steaks that tasted to me like they were imported from Earth. It seemed my new orderly was a gifted scrounger. That could be very useful.

  We ate and discussed the regiment, and by the time the meeting broke up we had begun the transition from a group of officers to a team. The c
hemistry was good, and I was confident we’d work well as a unit. My only reservation was that Jax was the only one who’d ever taken the field at his current position—the rest had all moved up a notch. Except me; I’d moved up two. And even Jax had been filling in for me as acting CO—this was his first mission as official battalion commander. It wasn’t just at the top. Eight of the regiment’s ten captains were newly promoted as well. But ten years of war and long casualty lists had a way of making that the norm.

  That first meeting lasted four hours, far longer than I had initially intended, and once they were all gone I found my sleeping platform and just about passed out. It’d been almost 40 hours since I’d slept, and I was out the instant I hit the bed.

  I spent the next week reorganizing and restructuring the regiment. I took the general up on his offer to approve my promotions and transfers, and I sent him a pile of them. True to his word, he signed every one without hesitation. I was more or less trying to balance the experience levels of the troops, but I did make a couple exceptions. I picked one company and packed it with veterans. I wanted one elite formation I could call upon in a tough spot, and Jax’s 1st company was it.

  I’d fought in close quarters a number of times, first on the station at Gliese, then on the moons, and finally on Eridu. That kind of knife fight was a different sort of struggle, and I organized another company consisting mostly of veterans of this kind of battle and had them drill on close quarters combat, including a substantial amount of practice with their blades. If I needed to hit a mine or underground stronghold, I would have a specialist formation to lead the assault.

  I reviewed supply manifests, training reports, disciplinary proceedings, and a hundred other bits of administrative drudgery. When did regimental commanders get to fight? Going to war would get in the way of my busy clerical schedule. Being chained to a workstation was not what I’d expected, but to a certain extent it’s what I got.

  There were 1,402 men and women in the 3rd Regiment, and I was responsible for every one of them. Fourteen hundred suits of armor, thousands of weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition, not to mention food, clothes, medical supplies, and everything else a force that size needs to function. I had to deal with all of it. But I felt good. I had strong officers, even if they were all moving up a rank and handling new responsibilities. The troops were eager, and the general had made sure I Corps was the best equipped force to take the field in Alliance history.

  My journey to this point had been an improbable one, but it had been a trip that led me home. I had known that for a long time, and I had gotten all the additional assurance I would ever need enduring several months back on Earth surrounded by maggot politicians, generations of whom had wrecked the place and created the hideous system that had destroyed my first family. But this was my family now, and I wouldn’t let anything hurt it. I’d go to hell and back with them, and I knew that they would always be there for me.

  The weeks of final preparations went quickly, and the embarkations began. Lifting 45,000 troops, plus weapons, equipment, and supplies into orbit was a monumental task. I stood in the training field and watched the nearly endless stream of shuttles lifting off and returning.

  My regiment was assigned to three of the big new assault ships of the Excalibur class, and we were almost the last unit to board. I looked around at the field we were leaving deserted and at Weston in the distance, new construction buzzing everywhere. I glanced back one last time at the ridgeline where I’d come as close to dying as a still living person could.

  I arranged to be the last person from 3rd Regiment to board, and with one final look behind me, I walked up into the bay of the shuttle and the ramp closed behind me. Ten minutes later we were airborne; in 30 we were in orbit preparing to dock with our assault ship.

  My mind was on the enemy, and my thought was simple and clear. We are coming for you now.

  ----o0o----

  About the Author

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  -o0o-

  Also By Jay Allan

  Tombstone (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  Bitter Glory (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  The Gates of Hell (A Crimson Worlds Prequel) War Stories (All 3 Crimson Worlds Prequels) Marines (Crimson Worlds I)

  The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

  A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)

  The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)

  The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)

  To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)

  The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)

  Gehenna Dawn (Portal Worlds I)

  The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)

  The Dragon’s Banner (Pendragon Chronicles I) -o0o-

  Upcoming

  Fall

  (Crimson Worlds IX)

  November 2014

  Into the Darkness

  (Crimson Worlds: Refugees I)

  January 2015

  MERCs

  (Crimson Worlds: Successors I)

  March 2015

  Dragon Rising

  (The Last War: Volume I)

  May 2015

  Find Jay’s Books on Amazon

  BONUS!

  “The Gates of Hell”:

  Crimson Worlds Prequel Novella III

  JAY ALLAN

  Copyright © 2014 Jay Allan Books

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  o0o

  Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

  —Thomas Paine

  Excerpt from the memoirs of General Elias Holm,

  Commandant, Alliance Marine Corps:

  Persis. It was … it still is … a major Caliphate sector capital and one of their most important colonies. The system is a choke point, a nexus of half a dozen warp gates leading to almost everywhere worthwhile in Caliphate space. It is a massively valuable piece of interstellar real estate, utterly crucial to the Caliphate, and that’s why we were there. The Second Frontier War had been raging for more than a decade, and the scars of battle were everywhere. Tens of thousands of soldiers—and an uncounted number of civilians—were dead, buried in the sands they’d fought to conquer or defend. Dozens of worlds lay in ruins, the battlefields where the Superpowers fought their seemingly never-ending struggle.

  The scale of operations, like the colonial holdings of the Powers, had grown enormously in the years since the previous war, and ten years of all-out effort had driven the combatants to the brink of economic collapse. The fleets were worn down, damaged vessels backed up at the shipyards and new construction unable to keep pace with combat losses. The ground forces had savaged each other in a hundred battles, the few surviving veterans pushed to the breaking point. There was growing starvation in the slums of Earth and hordes of refugees in the colonies, as more and more resources were poured into keeping exhausted armies and navies in the fight. Something had to give … the war had degenerated into a stalemate, one that was strangling all the participants. The invasion of Persis was designed to break that deadlock.

  The operation was General Worthington’s brainchild. It was an audacious undertaking, by far the most ambitious planetary assault ever attempted up to that time. Persis had been considered one of the “untouchables,” a world sufficiently developed to fight off any mobile assault one of the Powers could launch. But no one had ever called “Viper
” Worthington timid. His perfectly planned and executed lightning strikes had brought the Alliance back from the brink of defeat early in the war. At Persis, he would launch the most daring assault of his career, and it would win the war for the Alliance. But that brilliant victory would not be without cost … in blood and treasure, of course … but also in disillusionment and despair.

  As a Marine you plan for anything … anything but being abandoned by your own government, left to die at the hands of your enemy, written off as the price of an advantageous peace. The fighting on Persis was brutal, hard on everyone who served there. But it became a nightmare for the Marines of the 3rd Battalion … the men and women it was my privilege to lead during those fateful days.

  Marines stare into the gates of hell every day; it’s what we do. But on Persis, we went through those gates … and we came out on the other side. At least some of us did…

  CHAPTER 1

  Serapis Ridge

  HQ—Force Hammer

  Planet Persis—Iota Persi II

  Day One

  “Alright, 3rd Battalion, let’s get moving.” Captain Elias Holm turned slowly, looking out over the deep valleys on both sides of the position. The ridge was ideal terrain, a long stretch of upland with a narrow depression running right down the center. Perfect cover. If the enemy wanted to move his people off this high ground they were going to have to throw one hell of a lot of force in to do it … that much was certain. Holm knew they didn’t have that much to spare, not without dangerously weakening their main line. His people had landed at a weak point, kilometers behind the enemy’s primary defensive axis.

  “You all know what to do.” Holm snapped out his orders over the unitwide com. “Nothing’s changed, so get to work. I want everybody in position now.” There were landers scattered all around the ridge, and some of his platoons were still unloading and shaking out into formation. He had to get the rest of the battalion up onto the high ground and in position. If the enemy hit them while they were still forming up, he’d throw away every advantage gained by the surprise landing.