Rebellion's Fury Page 27

  “Yes, sir.”

  More force. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t tactical brilliance. But it was what he had. The rebels were outnumbered, and he was going to make that count.

  Yet even as the troops moved forward, he couldn’t help but be nervous about how many of his reserves he’d already committed. He couldn’t leave his troops pushing forward through the meat grinder they’d been in all morning, but it was a risk. After a moment’s hesitation, he committed to his own plan, and the worry changed to determination.

  It was time to push, time for the final attack.

  Time to break through, to destroy the rebel army.

  He reached down again, his hand gripping the comm. They’ll break, he thought. If I throw in the rest of the reserves . . . one massive attack.

  They’ll break.

  “Get going. Pull back two kilometers and get headquarters set up again.” Damian was standing in the middle of what had been army headquarters. The federals were less than a kilometer away, and Devlin Kerr’s forces were dug in no more than five hundred meters forward.

  “Get going? You’re not coming?” Ben Withers managed to sound both horrified and totally unsurprised at the same time.

  “No.” Damian was staring off in the direction of the enemy.

  “No? Would you care to explain why not?”

  “No. I didn’t think that was one of the army commander’s obligations.” He smiled. “Seriously, I just need to wait. I had gone to the line to send in Jamie’s armor, but it hadn’t been time then. We need the right moment.”

  “But you still need to wait? Don’t you think it’s time now?”

  “Not yet.” He was still looking off into the woods as he spoke to his aide. “Our people are holding out too well.” The words sounded strange to him even as they came out of his mouth. “I mean, I want the feds a little farther forward. We need to maximize the shock of this attack. You know how good those troops are, how tough it will be to rout them, to send that whole army pulling back in disorder. We need a few more minutes, and I need to stay here and make that call. Leave me two runners, and make sure the HQ gets set up as quickly as possible.” He turned back, exchanging glances with Withers for the first time in the conversation. “I’ll be right behind you, Ben. I just want to make the right call on this. I won’t grab my pistol and dive into a pack of feds, I promise.”

  Withers looked back, nodding, but clearly not entirely convinced Damian wouldn’t throw himself into the middle of the fight. “Yes, sir.” Withers turned, but stopped midway. “Be careful, Damian.”

  “I will, Ben.”

  He moved forward, toward the hasty works Kerr’s troopers had erected. It wasn’t much, but any cover was worth its weight in gold when the shooting started. Which it already had.

  Damian ducked down as he heard a bullet whip by him. The feds were still forming up for their attack, but that didn’t mean there was no fire coming in. Even as he looked around for Colonel Kerr, he saw a trooper hit. She’d been semiprone behind a mound of dirt, but then she’d popped up over her cover to peer out toward the enemy line and caught a round in the shoulder. Damian didn’t think it was all that serious a wound, but it looked as if it hurt like crazy.

  “General, you should fall back. The feds will be coming in a few minutes.” Damian hadn’t found Kerr, but the colonel had found him.

  “I can see that, Dev, but I’m here to get a feel for the enemy strength. I need to know they’ve committed at least most of their reserves before I send Captain Grant’s people in.”

  “They have to have most of their reserves in, General. We’ve hurt them. Bad. I can’t even guess at their casualties so far, but they just keep coming.”

  “I need to be sure, Dev. We’ve got one shot at this. We . . .”

  The ground in front of Kerr’s line erupted suddenly, what sounded like at least twenty autocannons opening up and raking the rebel position.

  Damian dropped to the ground instinctively, as did Kerr and his two runners. But one of the officers had been too slow, and Damian could see him lying motionless, his still-open eyes staring up from his dead face.

  He looked over at Kerr to check on him, and he saw the colonel was doing the same with him. The two exchanged glances, and then Kerr crawled forward, snapping out orders to the troopers within earshot.

  Damian stayed where he was, watching. The autocannon barrage continued, perhaps for three or four minutes, and despite their cover and their caution, at least a dozen of Kerr’s people had been hit.

  Then the fire diminished, perhaps six guns still shooting, now on carefully constructed fields of fire. Damian knew exactly what was happening. He couldn’t see the advancing federals, not through the dense woods, but he knew they were coming.

  He could hear them now, the fire of their assault rifles as they surged forward, leapfrogging, blasting Kerr’s line with covering fire. It was a big attack, strong. Strong enough that Kerr’s people couldn’t hold, and when they pulled back, Morgan’s line would have to retreat as well. The feds had pushed hard all morning, throwing more and more forces into taking each of his fortified positions. They had to have most of their forces deployed.

  They had to.

  Chapter 33

  Near the Intersection of Tillis and Sanderson Roads

  Just Outside Dover, 47 Kilometers North of Landfall

  Federal Colony Alpha-2, Epsilon Eridani II (Haven)

  The Third Battle of Dover—The Ambush

  Jamie Grant stood silently, staring out into the trees, waiting. Waiting for the word to advance.

  He was scared, of course, as any sane person would be before going into battle. More than that, though, he was nervous, fully aware of the fact that three hundred lives, not to mention, possibly, the fate of the entire army and rebellion, depended on how well he executed his orders.

  But most of all, he was uncomfortable.

  The suits were amazing pieces of technology, and their potential as weapons was unmistakable. But the damned things were a nightmare to be trapped inside of, especially for hours on end. Holcomb had told Jamie that his initial plan called for heavy conditioning as part of the training program, and a cocktail of drugs to help troopers endure the experience. But there hadn’t been time for such training, and the army’s dwindling drug supply didn’t include the kind of mind-affecting pharmaceuticals Holcomb had specified. So his people had no choice except to endure, to ignore the claustrophobia, to try their best to ignore the itches, the urges to scratch or wipe away droplets of sweat. He almost craved the messenger who would give him the order to lead his command forward, to finish this one way or another.

  “Captain, do you think we should move forward? It sounds like the enemy is pushing our people back.” The voice was a bit staticky over the comm, but clear enough.

  Grant turned to face the officer, though as he did it, he realized it was fairly pointless. All his people looked exactly the same when armored up, and notions like eye contact were irrelevant. Plus, his people had the advantage of active comm, at least at short ranges, courtesy of their nuclear-powered backpacks’ ability to burn through the federal jamming. He couldn’t reach HQ, or any of the units on the line, but his own troopers could communicate. That was another advantage, one he expected would be a surprise to the feds.

  “No,” he said, though he felt the same way. It was surprisingly difficult to stand there, waiting, while the enhanced audio built into his suit picked up the sounds of fighting kilometers away. But he trusted Damian with his life, and he was going to wait until he got the order to move forward. “We are to remain here until the runner arrives.”

  “Sir, what if the runner never gets here? The army’s in trouble, Captain. You can hear that much.”

  “You hear the sounds of combat, Lieutenant, and that is all. Don’t pretend you know what is actually happening up there.” And don’t forget, the whole plan is to lure the enemy in, to feign a retreat.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lie
utenant Ferris didn’t sound satisfied, but he didn’t argue further, either, and Jamie was willing to accept that. Soon enough, his people would have plenty to occupy themselves. The combat power of the suits was unquestionable, but there were other factors on his mind. They were barely tested, and they were built under terrible conditions. He considered it a mathematical certainty that some of his people would die today from malfunctions. A power failure or servo malfunction would render any of his soldiers motionless. Human muscles were inadequate to move the ten-ton suits so much as a millimeter, and a failure anywhere in the system was a death sentence on the field. Weapons system breakdowns, radiation leaks, not to mention human error by troops with a laughably small amount of training and practice time—it all made the operation staggeringly dangerous, beyond even the combat itself.

  Jamie stared out into the woods, cranking up the vision mag system, trying to detect any movement at all. Despite what he’d said to Ferris, he was worried that perhaps the runner hadn’t gotten through, that something had gone wrong. What if the army was in trouble, if Damian needed his people now?

  He was still arguing with himself when he saw something. Movement? Or his imagination.

  He turned his head sharply, fixed his eyes on the position. Yes, it was motion. Someone was coming.

  He felt tension all through his body, his stomach clenching hard. Was it time?

  A few seconds later, a figure emerged completely from the dense forest, an officer, waving his hands and shouting. “Captain Grant . . . the general orders you to begin your attack. You are to hit the enemy directly to your front, which will be their rear flank.”

  “Very well, Captain,” Grant responded, turning down the volume on his outside speakers when he realized how loud they were. “Go back and tell General Ward that we are on our way.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The messenger turned and dashed back into the woods.

  “All right, let’s move out.” Jamie waved his arm, gesturing toward the woods. “It’s time to give these fed bastards a surprise they won’t soon forget.”

  He stood, his massive arm pointing in the direction of the advance, as his soldiers stepped off into the woods. The armored figures were huge, cumbersome, and his soldiers swung their arms in front of them to clear away anything but the largest trees.

  Jamie watched, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the relative order his hastily organized unit displayed. His excitement was tempered by the sight of four or five of his troopers motionless, their suits clearly malfunctioning in one way or another.

  “If your suit’s not responding, activate the diagnostics right away.” A pause. “And if you can’t get the thing working, pop yourself out, and get back to HQ. And don’t forget, activate the destruct sequence before you abandon your suit.” The last thing the Haven army needed was for their new secret weapons to fall into federal hands. It was their one advantage, and giving the enemy a few of them to analyze would be a disaster.

  Jamie turned, watching as his column continued off into the woods. He took one glance back at the malfunctioning units—seven now—and he took a deep breath and followed his troopers into the woods.

  Toward the federals.

  “They’re breaking, Colonel. We’ve taken their abandoned headquarters, and their forces are pulling back all along the line.”

  Colonel Granz stood stone-faced, deep in thought, even as he listened to the third messenger in ten minutes, all of them delivering optimistic reports about the enemy withdrawing.

  Withdrawing. Retreating. Pulling back.

  He thought of the words in these reports, and he compared them to those from the year before. Running, fleeing, routing.

  There was no question, his people were driving the rebels from the field. But there was no panic, no disorder. Each time his forces took one of their lines, they fell back in good order and formed another defensive position. They were taking losses, of course, but nothing like the horrendous casualties his forces were enduring in the sustained attacks. And they were giving as good as they were getting.

  Still, his army was winning the day, and despite their vastly improved performance, he couldn’t imagine the rebel cause could sustain another defeat. His troops were exhausted, and they’d suffered badly, but when the rebels finally broke, he was going to drive his people forward. This time there would be no retreat, no further withdrawal. He wasn’t going to allow Damian Ward to regroup his defeated forces. Whatever it took, however costly in casualties and misery for his soldiers, it would almost certainly be a better option than allowing this conflict to continue.

  He hesitated. He knew what he needed to do, but there was still a seed of uncertainty. He’d already committed most of his reserves, meaning he had only two fresh battalions left. If he deployed them now . . .

  But if he didn’t, his exhausted soldiers might not have enough left to destroy the rebels, and he wasn’t about to let them escape again.

  “Captain,” he yelled toward one of his aides. “The eleventh and sixteenth battalions are to advance and support the center assault.”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer pulled out his comm unit and relayed the order. A moment later: “Colonel, we’re getting reports from the left flank, some kind of enemy force advancing.”

  Granz spun around, an intense glare falling on the officer. “Cancel that last order. Both battalions are to intercept the new enemy force.”

  “Colonel, we’re just getting scattered reports. We don’t even know . . .”

  “Do it!” Granz’s caution was hardening into tension. So this is your plan, Ward? He’d expected something from the rebels, some kind of ploy. A flanking force? It made sense, a way to take advantage of the rebels’ superior knowledge of the ground. But two fresh battalions should be enough to handle it. More than enough.

  Jamie stopped for a moment, leaning slightly forward and digging his armor’s feet into the ground as Holcomb had taught him. He extended his arm, aiming the rail gun carefully. Holcomb had told him a dozen times, the hypervelocity weapon wasn’t technically a rail gun, but every other name he’d given was just too big a mouthful. And it didn’t matter what it was called anyway. The thing was a beast.

  He fired again, feeling the massive kickback, even in his powerful armor. The projectile, really just a piece of depleted uranium, streaked through the sky at 5,000 meters per second, far too fast to follow with the eye. All that was visible was the glow of ionized air behind it, and the wild tumult of obliterated trees and shards of pulverized wood flying through the air.

  He moved his arm, snapping the weapon back into its holding place, and began moving forward again, firing the dual autocannons as he did. The firepower of the suit was immense, even more astonishing in actual combat than it had been in training. His strike force had virtually annihilated the federal troops they’d encountered first, driving the few survivors off in unrestrained flight.

  Then they’d encountered two fresh battalions. The federals were still moving up, so they hadn’t had time to deploy or dig in. But there were over twelve hundred of them, and they were ready to fight.

  Jamie’s people opened up on them, the withering fire from their suits chopping their forward companies to bits before the rest of the troopers dropped to the ground and grabbed what cover they could. Then they began returning fire, and within another minute, their own heavy weapons began to tell.

  The suits were tough, proof against most assault rifle rounds, unless a lucky shot hit a weak spot. But the autocannons were a different matter, and Jamie’s force began to take casualties. He’d already lost more than twenty of his people to malfunctions and mechanical failures, and now the federal fire began to take a toll. He glanced down at the small screen in his helmet. It was hard to read, and even harder to manipulate, but Holcomb had gotten it functioning, at least to an extent. Jamie had a partial unit as the commander, and six of his officers did, as well, but the rest of his troopers had only basic computer enhancement and comm units.

  A mo
re sustained glance suggested only half of those were actual casualties, that the rest were troopers whose suits were damaged. Yet another reason this was a fight to the end. If the rebel forces retreated, they’d leave at least some suits behind—particularly those with dead operators who couldn’t self-destruct—a gift to the federals. If the rebels had managed to build three hundred suits over the winter under nearly impossible conditions, he shuddered to think of what the federals could do with the technology.

  But as much as that worried him, he felt like they had the upper hand. The federals had powerful weapons, but even the autocannons required a well-placed shot to really take out an armored trooper, and the volume of fire was lopsided, the federals losing dozens of their number for every rebel they took out.

  The calculus was beyond Jamie at the moment, but it seemed like they might actually come out of this thing with the upper hand.

  “Team Blue, around the left. Team Green around the right.” He knew his people could beat the federals in a straight-up face-to-face battle, but he didn’t want to pay the price for that. His troopers were faster, far more mobile, and he intended to take advantage of that.

  “Red, Yellow, and White teams, maintain fire, and continue advancing.”

  He maintained his fire, switching both cannons to full auto. He’d been conserving ammunition so far, because the army had no real battlefield logistics capability, and when his troopers ran out of what they had . . . well, they’d better have won the victory by then. But these soldiers weren’t exhausted, battered troops who’d been attacking all morning. And so it was going to take more than targeted fire to dislodge them.

  He meant to show them a maelstrom of bullets.

  Because it was clear the federals were outgunned. The lumbering suits of powered armor seemed unstoppable, and their nuclear-powered arsenals devastating. Half the federals, at least, were down, and now the others were falling back.