All for All, page 16
part #3 of Cast Adrift Series
"Alter course to intercept," she ordered. "We'll try to run them down."
She frowned as she saw the converging vectors on the display. The odds were against them, but if she was lucky the Pashtali would try to fire a shot or two for the honour of the flag. It depended on how daring the enemy CO was feeling. The smart thing to do would be to just keep building up speed, trying to keep the range as open as possible, even if they came into effective firing range for a few moments. The daring thing would be to close the range a little increasing the odds of a hit, but they'd have problems getting away afterwards. She could afford to fire enough missiles, even at that range, to swamp their defences.
"Admiral," Olson said. "They're piling on the speed."
Naomi nodded, concealing her annoyance. It was good to watch the enemy ships run before her - it would make good propaganda, if nothing else - but she wanted to smash the ships before they found friends and came back to reclaim the system. For all she knew, there were entire fleets of battleships rushing towards her. It was possible, too. The human race had spent six months assembling every warship they could build, beg, borrow or steal. The Pashtali had to be doing the same.
"Hold our current course for ten minutes, then detach two pursuit squadrons to shadow them all the way to the crossroads," she ordered. "If they keep running, one squadron is to take up position on the far side and watch for enemy reinforcements; the other is to hold position on the near side and wait."
"Aye, Admiral," Olson said.
Observer Salix caught her eye. "They're running for their lives," he said. "That's odd."
"It's the best thing they could do," Naomi said. "If they stood and fought, we'd blow them to hell. If they tried a long-range engagement, we'd throw enough missiles at them to smother their defences. Retreating is probably the best thing they can do. They know where the nearest reinforcements are, even if we don't. They'll link up with them and come back here with blood in their eye."
She glanced at Olson. "Detach a pair of scouts and order them to shadow the enemy ships as far as possible," she added. "If they find reinforcements, I want to know about it."
"Aye, Admiral," Olson said.
Observer Salix frowned. "The enemy will use the threadlines to evade the scouts."
"Perhaps." Naomi put firm controls on her temper. "It's worth a try. The scouts may find nothing, or they may lose the enemy, or they may locate the enemy fleet before it surprises us."
She kept her face blank, somehow. She didn't mind being questioned in private - Admiral Glass had always insisted people learnt through asking questions and listening to the answers - but being interrogated on her own command deck was irritating as hell. It probably wasn't good for discipline either. She knew it was important for her subordinates to understand the reasoning behind her orders - she'd had one superior who'd kept everyone in the dark as long as possible, only to cause a near-disaster when he'd been taken out in the middle of the engagement - but there were limits. She would have preferred the observer kept his mouth shut and waited until they were alone to ask questions.
But his role here is probably to observe us as well as the war, she thought. Observer Salix was so different from her old commander she was tempted to wonder if they were different races. It was impossible, but still ... I wonder what his report will say, when he sends it home?
"Admiral," Olson said. "The enemy is still picking up speed."
"And overpowering their drives," Naomi said. She hoped their drive nodes would fail, although she doubted it. They'd have a far better idea of what their ships could take. "I think they won't stop running until they reach the crossroads."
She studied the display for a moment, then shrugged. There was no point in wasting any more time. They weren't going to intercept the enemy ships unless the enemy decided to commit suicide.
"Detach the pursuit ships now," she ordered. "And then order the remainder of the fleet to advance on Tarsus."
"Aye, Admiral," Olson said.
Naomi braced herself as the fleet altered course, swinging around to head straight at the planet. The enemy fleet was gone and was no longer in a position to do much of anything, but they'd left a lot of weapons platforms orbiting Tarsus. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted a handful of platforms opening fire, raining KEWs and plasma bolts on the surface. The bastards didn't seem to think the fighting was over, damn them. Were they aiming to do as much damage as possible before they were wiped out? Or were they up to something?
"Signal the enemy," she ordered, quietly. "Transmit the surrender demand."
"Aye, Admiral."
"They won't listen," Observer Salix predicted. "Why should they?"
Naomi gave him a sharp look. "Because they are doomed," she said, flatly. "They will be slaughtered if they try to continue the fight, either by us or by the locals. If they surrender to us, we'll treat them in line with interstellar treaties ... if they surrender now. If they don't ..."
"They'd still be surrendering to a very lowly race indeed," Observer Salix countered. "They might prefer to die."
"Really?" Naomi felt a flash of irritation. The Pashtali had surrendered - once - at Earth. They might be happier if it had been the Alphans or another Galactic race that had forced them into surrender, instead of uppity humanity, but the precedent had been set. It was unlikely the local Pashtali didn't know. The news had travelled all over the known galaxy. "If they want to die, they will."
***
Observer Salix kept his thoughts to himself as the human admiral turned away and busied herself issuing orders to her subordinates. It was hard to read human emotions, and harder still to understand them, but he was fairly sure she was annoyed. Humans were a prideful bunch, even after hundreds of years under alien rule. They didn't like the reminder that most senior races regarded them as children, rather than a mature race in their own right. And while they had a lot to be proud of, they also lacked the awareness of just how small their achievements were compared to their former masters.
To be fair, they did best the Pashtali more than once, he reminded himself. But only through cheating.
He hid his dismay at the treacherous thought. The Pashtali had been caught by surprise, first at Terminus and then at Tarsus. They had probably anticipated the humans trying to reclaim the Occupied Zone, perhaps crossing the border there and infringing Pashtali space. To attack a target so far from home ... it sounded insane and perhaps it was, yet it really had knocked the Pashtali off-balance. And the humans had found allies.
Remarkable, he thought, with genuine pleasure. Who would have considered it?
His mood soured. The Alphans weren't used to treating other races as equals. The best they offered anyone, even their peers, was ill-hidden condescension. They weren't the only Galactics who refused to consider junior races their equals. The Pashtali didn't have allies, they had servants. And everyone else was just the same. The Alphans might have liberated Terminus, and made a big song and dance about doing it, but they wouldn't have just handed it back to the locals either. They would have come up with an excuse and kept it for themselves. But the humans had simply handed it over to the locals without a fight, or even an argument. It was insane, by the standards of good galactic behaviour, and yet ...
It might have worked out in their favour. They could have held the bottleneck system and dared the locals to kick them out. Better human masters than Pashtali, right? They could have held the system against the Pashtali too, if they dug in ... there was nothing to gain by abandoning the system and a great deal to lose. Except, it had won them allies and friends - true friends. The alien ships accompanying the human fleet was proof enough of that! And ... they'd been cunning, too. By convincing the various lesser powers to work together to fortify the bottleneck, they'd not only won themselves a lot of influence, but also made it harder for their allies to switch sides. Observer Salix had no idea how much of it was intentional - and how much sheer luck - but it didn't matter. It was against galactic principles, against the cold law of the jungle the galaxy had observed since time out of mind, and it had worked. The humans had come out ahead.
And what does this mean, he asked himself, for the rest of the galaxy?
"Admiral," the little human operator said. "The Pashtali on the ground are refusing to surrender. The local government is requesting we clear them out."
"Drop KEWs on them," Observer Salix advised. It was unfortunate there would likely be innocent locals amidst the enemy targets, but it was a small price to pay for liberating the planet. "Crush them from orbit."
"They're too intermingled," Admiral Yagami said. "We need to land troops to flush them out."
Observer Salix leaned forward. "The locals don't have troops of their own?"
"Not in position to intervene quickly," the little human said. "They're too dug in to take the offensive."
"Quite," Admiral Yagami said. "Alert the Marines. They are to prepare for rapid deployment."
"Aye, Admiral."
Observer Salix frowned. It was insane. Crazy. And yet, the humans had a saying. Crazy like a fox, crazy enough to work ... the death toll was going to be high and yet ...
The locals are going to think the humans took risks they didn't have to take, just to keep their casualties down, he thought. No other race would put the lives of aliens ahead of their own, even if they were allies. How will this work out for them?
Bracing himself, he leaned in to watch.
Chapter Seventeen
Tarsus, Tarsus System
"Your targets are the bug-like things," Captain Arcos snapped, as the shuttle ploughed into the planet's atmosphere. "If any of you shoot a frog, you'd damn well better be able to justify it!"
Lieutenant Wesley Anderson nodded, feeling sweat trickling down his back. The armoured combat suit was supposed to maintain his temperature at a reasonable level, but somehow he felt both hot and cold as the shuttle continued her descent. It wasn't the first drop he'd made - he'd jumped a dozen times during training and several more during his initial deployment - yet it was his first drop into a combat zone. The live feed from the shuttle's sensors showed enemy missiles and energy weapons, rising to target the shuttles as they dropped towards the ground. It seemed impossible they'd survive long enough to deploy, even though the decoys were absorbing much of the enemy fire. He wished they'd had time to secure a proper landing zone on the far side of the border, then march overland to their target. But there'd been no time.
The military life, he reflected. Long hours of boredom, followed by moments of screaming terror.
"Jump in five," the jumpmaster called. "Brace yourself."
Wesley gritted his teeth, reminding himself he'd been through worse. He hadn't backed out on his first drop and he wasn't going to back out now, not that he could. He'd have been in deep shit if he'd backed out when they'd been on the ship, but at least it would have been possible. Now, he was committed. The suits were already being shoved towards the hatch. He frowned as he watched the live feed - a missile flashed past, so close he was sure he could reach out and touch it - and then drew back, cursing himself. If there was a missile out there with the shuttle's name on it, he wouldn't see the incoming shot. They'd be dead before they knew what had hit them.
The shuttle lurched. Something had exploded, far too close for comfort. Someone was praying over the command net - Wesley started to mute them, then stopped. It would make it impossible to hear if they had something more important to say. The Marines around him were brave men - cowards didn't get through Boot Camp - but right now they were as helpless as the alien civilians on the planet below. They couldn't do anything, other than wait for the drop and rely on the pilot to save their lives. The sheer helplessness grated. Wesley had been trained to always take the offensive, but now all he could do was hang in his suit and wait.
"Fifty seconds," the jumpmaster said. A low rumble echoed through the suit as it glided forward. "Forty seconds ..."
Wesley felt a sudden shove as the suit was thrown into the atmosphere. His automatic systems took over, sending him plummeting towards the ground. He barely noticed as the suit picked up speed, his HUD feeding him a steady stream of data from stealth probes and the orbiting starships. The enemy were on the move, but to where? He frowned as a kinetic projectile flashed past and hit the ground, raw energy marking the destruction. A smart enemy would be trying to surrender by now, he was sure. Their starships were gone, leaving them alone and encircled on a very hostile world. The frog-like natives were probably gearing up to push the invaders back into the sea.
Unless they think their tormentors will return, Wesley thought. It wasn't impossible. The briefing had made it clear that the fleet had to move fast and break things, rather than risk getting bogged down. They might be afraid to lift a hand against the Pashtali for fear they'll retake the high orbitals and then retaliate.
He braced himself. There were more flashes of light on the ground, faint impressions of alien cities that looked decidedly weird despite being combat zones. His suit reported that the air was breathable, but with some contaminants that might be harmless or might be chemical weapons unleashed by one side or the other. Species-specific toxins were banned by galactic conventions, from what he'd been taught at Boot Camp, but the Pashtali cared little for such niceties. He shuddered in disgust. They could have dusted the entire planet with a lethal virus, waited a year and then moved into the dead world and taken it for themselves. There was no one who could have tried to stop them.
The ground came up and hit him, the suit's antigravity units kicking in a bare second before he would have hit the surface and gone splat. There was no time for shock, no time to catch his breath as the rest of the squad landed around him. His HUD was already filling with tactical updates, precise notations of where his fellows waited intermingled by vaguer notes of prospective enemy positions. He looked around, noticing the strange combination of alien buildings behind him. The hive-like Pashtali structures contrasted oddly with buildings that seemed to be made from mud and wood, strikingly human-like even though they rested within pools of water. He looked down and realised they were standing in mud. The ground felt both stable and slippery.
"They're retreating from their forward posts," the drone operator warned. The tactical map updated rapidly, showing a stream of enemy soldiers heading towards the human positions. "I think they're trying to concentrate ..."
The ground shook as more KEWs hammered down. Wesley hoped they'd wipe out most of the enemy troops before they encountered the humans, but he knew that was wishful thinking. The two groups of aliens were too closely intermingled for indiscriminate orbital strikes. Only a complete idiot would assume there was a way to separate the friendlies from the enemies and kill the latter without harming the former, but he'd been cautioned there were a lot of complete idiots in politics. The human race couldn't afford an incident enemy propaganda would turn into a full-scale atrocity, even though the enemy had committed an entire string of atrocities themselves. It wasn't fair - no one with half a brain would believe it was possible to be entirely sure of one's target in a war zone - but it was an inescapable reality. They'd just have to be as careful as possible and hope for the best.
He snapped orders as the squad advanced, taking up firing positions and waiting. The Pashtali weren't being as foolish as they looked, even though they were exposing themselves to orbital fire. If their forward units fell back to the occupied cities, they could use the civilians as human - alien - shields and hold out long enough for their fleet to return and drive the human ships away. Even if their fleet didn't return, winkling them out would be long, costly and devastating. He gritted his teeth, reminding himself that the local civilians didn't deserve to be slaughtered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They might be alien, but they still deserved to live.
The ground shook, again. The enemy were firing missiles in all directions, some aimed at the starships and shuttles overhead and others on the landing zones. Wesley cursed as a nuclear warhead broke through the hastily established point defence network and detonated right on top of a human position, wiping out a command post and a number of human troops and ... he told himself the armoured suits were tough, that they were designed to thrive in very hostile environments, that if they weren't at ground zero there was a very good chance the wearer had survived. It didn't matter. The command post was clearly out of contact and would remain so for the foreseeable future. The command network had already adapted, ensuring the chain of command remained firmly in place. The enemy were drawing closer ...
"Shit," someone muttered.
Wesley was inclined to agree as the Pashtali came out of nowhere and charged. It wasn't the first time he'd seen the spider-like aliens, but it was easily the worst. A writhing mass of spidery legs and tentacles rushed towards him, a creeping nightmare that reflected humanity's worst phobias. He'd grown up on a starship and spent most of his life meeting aliens and yet merely seeing them charge made his stomach churn and his legs turn to jelly. He wanted to freeze and he wanted to run and ...
The Pashtali opened fire, snapping him back to himself. They might be horrific, but they were hardly supernatural monsters. They were a threat. Threats could be killed.
"Fire," he snapped.
The enemy line wavered as plasma bolts and railgun shells tore through flesh and armour as if it was nothing more than paper. The enemy didn't recoil, despite hundreds - perhaps thousands - being killed in the first seconds of fighting. They kept coming, heedlessly trampling over the dead and wounded. Wesley kept firing, feeling uncomfortably as though he was fighting an all-consuming fire with water. The flames could be kept at bay, but never quenched ... and they'd reach for him the moment he lost control of the hose.
