Crimson Worlds Collection II Page 40

  “Instruct them to start the reactor and then to initiate thrust plan as soon as power is available.” Jacobs leaned back in his chair and looked straight ahead. “Let’s see what these two planets have for us.

  Cooper Brown walked slowly down the slimy stone floor of the tunnel, trying not to wince at the putrid stench. Conditions in the shelters had steadily worsened, and they had become disease and crime ridden cesspools. The miserable inhabitants huddled against the walls, waiting for Brown’s people to bring in their miserly daily rations from the heavily guarded food storage facilities. You had to eat your ration right away; otherwise, when the militia left, someone would steal it. You’d be lucky if they didn’t kill you while they were doing it.

  Brown had struggled with how to handle the violence problem. He didn’t have enough troops to garrison the living areas around the clock, especially not while rebuilding at least some of the planet’s defenses. Adelaide had no functioning government now, no courts, no due process, no jails. He was the sole authority, the military commander of a world under martial law. A world with almost no power, not enough food, and no medicine. He hated the responsibility, but there was no other alternative.

  He turned the corner, and a pile of garbage came flying from a small crowd. He ducked quickly – combat reflexes were good for a lot of things - and the projectile slammed into the wall behind him, making a splat sound as it did. His escort snapped into action rushing toward the crowd with rifles drawn.

  “Halt!” Brown reacted quickly, calling his troops back to their places. He had no idea what would happen if his armed troops charged a group of angry civilians, and he didn’t want to find out. “As you were.” He was a little concerned that his troops were so ready to charge their friends and neighbors.

  He understood the anger, and he really couldn’t fault the people for hating him. He’d done all he could to try and ease the suffering, but after a long enough time, all people know is their misery. Brown had gone to boot camp at sixteen, and he’d spent his entire adult life in the Marine Corps and as the commander of Adelaide’s militia. War was all he knew, and now he was faced with managing a civilian population under the worst possible circumstances. He had no idea what to do.

  There wasn’t much to be done about the shortages. They were producing as much food as they could and working around the clock to get additional facilities up and running. He couldn’t risk trying to farm on the surface; there was too much danger of detection. Besides, nothing much would grow in the poor Adelaide soil anyway, at least not without fertilizers and equipment he didn’t have. All they could efficiently produce in the underground caves was a variety of algae and fungi, not terribly appetizing, but edible and nutritious enough to sustain life.

  They were out of medicine too, and routine infectious diseases had become virulent plagues. The tiny medical staff had finally managed to produce some crude antibiotics, and they used them to get the worst of the outbreaks under control. But the health of the colonists was still poor.

  He’d been hesitant to crack down hard on the crime. He was uncomfortable with the role of judge, jury, and executioner, and he realized that most of the violence was the inevitable result of people reaching the breaking point. But enough was enough. Now he was going to send the troops in to root out the criminals and the gangs. There would be only one punishment. He didn’t have time, manpower, or space to hold captives. Without courts, without proper investigation, he knew there was a risk of executing some innocents along with the guilty, but he didn’t see any other way. The last threads of civilization were breaking down in the shelters, and in another few weeks he’d lose all control. He had to do something.

  He wondered if they would hate him more or less after the crackdown. He wasn’t sure he cared anymore. Brown had gone from the most popular individual on the planet to the most reviled. He was surprised at how quickly that had happened. Intellectually, he understood that suffering people would lash out at any visible target, that they would focus their rage on any authority figure. But comprehending something and accepting it are different things, and the hostility had really bothered him at first. It felt as if his friends and neighbors had turned against him, when his only crime had been to struggle for their survival. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours here and there in over a year, and he’d devoted everything he had to the struggle to keep the survivors on Adelaide alive. His reward was their hatred, their bitterness.

  He was numb now. He didn’t really care what they thought; he was going to do his best to keep them alive anyway. He’d maintained the loyalty of the militia at least, and that was all that was important. If he lost that he was done…and so was the last chance of survival for the people of Adelaide. Without Brown, the militia would probably split into factions, and the colony’s tenuous grip on civilization would be lost, consumed by infighting. Or worse, they would get careless and end up drawing the attention of First Imperium forces passing through the system.

  He’d done some things he wasn’t proud of to maintain his grip on the militia. The families of his troops were moved to the best locations, and they received preferential rations. He couldn’t think of any alternative, but he hated it nevertheless. This is how it starts, he thought. He imagined the way the Alliance was governed; his mind drifted back to the filthy slums of Greater-Miami, were he’d spent the first 16 years of his life in squalor and miser, while those born into the Political Class lived in luxury. Is this really that different, he wondered?

  Yes, he told himself…it is different. This is temporary, born of necessity. But he was still uncomfortable, and he couldn’t help but imagine some grasping politician or general saying the same thing a century or two past on Earth. All his actions were based on the hope that eventually a relief expedition would reach Adelaide. But what if that didn’t happen? What if things stayed as they were for decades, a century? Wouldn’t the descendants of his militia and their families become a new privileged class, ruling over a new breed of Cogs? What if he were killed, and his successor craved power?

  There was an unspoken creed among most of the Alliance colonists, a belief that what had happened on Earth could not occur out in space. The culture was too different, the colonists were a different breed, the new worlds didn’t suffer from the shortages and pollution that plagued the home world…the reasons offered were many and varied. But Brown was seeing firsthand just how quickly things could veer out of control. That confidence, the cocky optimism most of the colonists had about the future, was gone.

  More than anything, he just wanted to go back to the Corps. They had a war to fight, and that was something he understood a lot better than trying to manage a crowd of terrified civilians. He’d retired because he decided he’d had enough of fighting, but now he had come to realize that men rarely chose their conflicts, and those struggles followed them to whatever places they sought refuge. His retirement, his new home, had turned into a nightmare. War had followed him, and he felt in his gut that it always would. Peace was a fantasy, an elusive dream, always out of reach.

  Chapter 11

  Northern Continent

  Planet Sandoval

  Delta Leonis System

  “The Line”

  The missiles streaked through the predawn sky, hundreds of them. They were precisely targeted, and as they sliced their way through the atmosphere, they vectored off in different directions, small phalanxes of death approaching dozens of locations across the planet.

  After the orbital fortresses were destroyed, the First Imperium fleet moved into position around the planet. In their underground bunkers, Cain’s people waited for an assault they thought would come immediately, but the enemy ships remained quietly in orbit and on station around Sandoval. For six days they scanned the planet, but they launched no attack. Until now.

  The First Imperium forces had not used nuclear weapons on the ground in any of the prior engagements. They were fighting over worlds they considered part of the Imperium, and their ancient doctr
ine dictated conventional warfare. Now the Regent had overruled that policy and, for the first time in the war, a target world would receive a nuclear bombardment.

  In his underground headquarters bunker, Erik Cain watched the missiles move across his screen. As soon as he saw the initial scanning report he knew in his gut the enemy had shed its prohibition and was using nuclear missiles. He had point defense emplacements in well-protected locations all over the planet, but he held them in check. They were there to shoot down enemy landers, not missiles. Cain had his army deep in reinforced defenses all over Sandoval and, as far as he was concerned, the enemy could do whatever they wanted to the surface. He’d fight them in a verdant paradise or a radioactive hell. He didn’t care.

  “Code Orange confirmed, general.” Carter was a little rattled, but he held himself together. “Verified nuclear warheads, sir.” Facing the enemy’s first nuclear bombardment, Cain’s command staff was sitting silently, nervously watching the incoming wave of atomic devastation.

  Cain sat calmly in his chair, unsurprised, a barely perceptible smile on his face. He’d been ready for this, and he was thrilled to see the First Imperium deploying nuclear weapons. He’d been under orders to refrain from going nuclear himself…unless the enemy did first. General Holm didn’t want to push the enemy to escalate, but Cain had always believed it would be a net benefit to his forces. He’d argued vociferously, and unsuccessfully, for the go ahead to use his nukes. Now his hands were untied, and he could respond in kind. The enemy would find a warm reception when they finally started landing ground forces, Cain promised himself that much.

  “It looks like all major cities and settlements have been targeted, sir.” Carter took a deep breath, working hard to remain calm. It wasn’t easy to be on the receiving end of a massive nuclear attack…even when you were deep underground in a hardened bunker. “All power stations, transit hubs, and militia facilities as well.”

  Cain was impassive. That was all standard for a comprehensive planetary bombardment. But none of his strength was deployed in any of those locations. The enemy was wasting all that firepower. Cain was here for one reason only - to beat the First Imperium. He was likely to give Sandoval back to its citizens in considerably rougher shape than he’d gotten it, but he wasn’t concerned about that. Such were the fortunes of war.

  “I want full Code Yellow protocols in effect.” Code Orange was the Alliance designation for imminent nuclear attack. Code Yellow was the directive for a nuclear offensive. “Place all atomic-equipped artillery units on alert and dispatch special ammunition to all ground formations.” Cain’s voice was steady and grim, but there was a touch of anticipation too. He couldn’t wait to fight the enemy without restrictions. “All units are authorized to use specials at their discretion. Battalion level controls.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carter let out a deep breath. Things were going to get hot on the surface…quickly. The Battle of Sandoval was going to be a vicious fight. Carter felt the tension in his gut, but also a wave of confidence. The enemy had superior technology and fearless robot warriors…but 1st Army had Erik Cain. All things considered, Carter rated it even. “Code Yellow parameters transmitted to all units, general.”

  Cain leaned back and watched the plots of the enemy attack unfold on his workstation. Go ahead, he thought, beat up the landscape and a bunch of abandoned towns I couldn’t care less about. He stared at his screen, eyes narrowed, expression cold, like chiseled marble. He muttered softly to himself. “I’m going to use my nukes to better effect, you bastards. Just wait and see.”

  The missiles swooped down like deadly swarms, the multistage vehicles dividing into dozens of small warheads that rained down over their targets in preset patterns. Each section was a 100 kiloton atomic bomb, and they exploded simultaneously, a massive version of the enemy’s cluster bomb weapon. The effect was intense, far more thorough than anything a single, larger warhead could achieve, and the target areas were utterly devastated. It was nuclear carpet bombing, and everything within the weapons’ blast zones was obliterated.

  The capital city of Dawson erupted into a hellish inferno, a dozen mushroom clouds billowing above the fiery destruction, the death agony of a place where 100,000 people had once lived. The shockwave ripped through the city’s structures, flattening everything manmade, and the firestorms raced out of control, consuming anything in their wake. The city where people had lived and worked and spent their lives was gone, replaced by a scene of hell.

  Thirty kilometers south of the capital, the sprawling spaceport was engulfed, its plasti-crete landing platforms blasted into jagged chunks and its support buildings mangled and twisted under the intense heat. Parked vehicles and orbital shuttles were blown around like toys by the shockwaves and consumed utterly by the walls of flame.

  All across the northern continent, every key location was targeted. The main mag-train terminal north of the capital, the other population centers, the power plants and mining facilities. Factories and storage facilities were demolished, and militia bases were wiped from the map. Everywhere, nuclear death rained down on all that men had built on Sandoval, leaving nothing but ghostly ruins and blasted landscape.

  Throughout the formerly inhabited areas of the planet, great clouds of dirt and debris rose high into the atmosphere, darkening the morning skies and spreading radioactive fallout in the high winds. For kilometers in any direction from the target zones, the radiation spiked well beyond lethal levels for unprotected men…but there was no one there to feel those effects. The surface of Sandoval had been abandoned long before the missiles came.

  Isaac Merrick peered through the scope of his command tank, mesmerized by what he saw. To the east, along a line running north to south there was nothing but a row of mushroom clouds billowing upward. Merrick was a career officer, but he’d had served all his life in the terrestrial army. He hadn’t seen serious combat until a few years earlier, when his division was sent to Arcadia to suppress the rebellion there. He’d been amazed at the intensity of the fighting, and his troops had paid the price of their inexperience. But this was something different, something he’d never seen before. He gazed out through the darkening morning, and he knew he was looking at total war.

  Merrick’s people were the only ones close to the surface, but they were in the deserted steppe, buttoned up in their heavy tanks. Every one of his vehicles was hull down and in cover. They’d be perfectly safe, as long as the enemy didn’t start targeting them directly…and it was very unlikely the stationary tanks would be detected from orbit.

  His crews were all from Earth, and he was worried about their lack of combat experience. There hadn’t been any war between the Superpowers on Earth for more than a century, and the terrestrial armies were generally unblooded formations. The enlisted ranks were filled with Cog recruits, and superfluous members of Political families occupied the officers’ billets. Some infantry and mechanized formations, at least, had been involved in paramilitary activities, keeping order within the Alliance…but main battle tanks hadn’t fired in anger since the Unification Wars ended. Not one of Merrick’s crew had ever fired their tank’s weapons other than in an exercise.

  The entire tank corps was under a communications blackout. The last thing they needed was for the enemy ships to pick up pointless comm chatter and drop a few dozen nukes on their heads. Merrick hoped his people had the discipline to obey that directive. He’d shoot anyone who didn’t, but that would be too little, too late if the slip brought nuclear devastation down on them.

  Inexperienced they might have been, but the tank corps on Sandoval represented the cream of the Earth-based forces. Merrick was hopeful they would perform well, that their training would be enough to carry them through this ordeal that was coming. One thing he was sure of…they would be veterans after this fight. If any of them survived.

  Merrick was nervous too. The fear of battle was there, certainly. He had no idea if they could win this fight and, even if they did, losses were going to be horrific.
He’d faced death before, in the fighting on Arcadia, but this was different. His insides felt cold, as if an icy hand gripped his spine. He hadn’t faced the First Imperium forces yet, but he’d spoken to officers who had, veteran Marines all, and he’d seen the fear in their jaded eyes.

  But there was more than just the fear of death. Merrick was grateful to Cain, to the Marines who’d accepted him. He’d been vilified by his own people, unfairly scapegoated and driven into exile. Yet, he’d found a new home among his former enemies. He was determined to justify the trust they’d placed in him. He was ready to do whatever it took to win this fight.

  “All ground to air batteries report 100% ready, sir.” Carter’s voice was sharp and clear. Now that the battle had begun, his edginess faded, pushed into the back of his mind. He was totally focused on the fight unfolding on his display. “All units waiting for the order to fire, general.”

  The enemy landing craft were coming down in a widely dispersed pattern. Cain was annoyed, but not surprised. He’d hoped they’d land in a dense pattern, making themselves easy targets for his nukes. But having gone nuclear themselves, the First Imperium forces had adopted a formation designed to counter a retaliatory strike.

  Cain stared ahead, glancing occasionally at the monitors displaying the status of the invasion force. He’d already waited longer than anyone had expected. The landers were well within range of his surface-to-air rockets. “Batteries 19 through 36…commence firing.”

  Carter hesitated, just for an instant. He’d expected Cain to order all units to fire. “Batteries 19 through 36, commence firing. I repeat, batteries 19 through 36, commence firing. All other units stand by.”

  Cain sat quietly, almost unmoving. He was revising his strategy, holding back half his defensive firepower. His original plan was to take out as much of the first wave as possible and to let the enemy land and throw themselves at his defenses. But the battle had gone nuclear, and that changed everything. The enemy was coming down in a dispersed pattern, and their formation would be spread out. Cain was going to attack.