The Great War: Books 1-4: (A Military Sci-Fi Box Set), page 1
THE GREAT WAR
©2021 RALPH KERN
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Contents
Acknowledgments
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
BOOK TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
BOOK THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Thank you for reading The Great War
More In Post Apocalyptic
Author’s Note – A Rain of Fire
Author’s Note – A Titan’s Vengeance
Author’s Note – A Relentless Fury
Author’s Note – A Heart of Ice
Technology
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all those who have supported me in writing this series. Caroline, for her patience. Shay for her editing. Jamie and Tom for their covers. Carl, for his wisdom. Carl, Greg, and Don for their wisdom.
And many others.
Join my mailing list for a free short story:
www.Ralphkern.com
BOOK ONE
A RAIN OF FIRE
Colonel Tor Hest
Galton Orbit
The glowing red digits of the timer projected on the cockpit heads-up display counted inexorably down.
This is happening…this is really happening. Colonel Aria Tor Hest tried to focus on the task at hand. Running through pre-jump checks. Ensuring her Lance was ready. Preparing for the brutal business to come.
And she failed. It was only training which guided her hands on the controls, even as she looked through the scratched, pitted cockpit window. Past the swarms of gently twinkling ships and jump mechs hanging in orbit over the dawning hemisphere of a pristine world. She wanted to capture in her mind, to look at—to really look at—her world, Galton, the capital of the Neo Hegemony. Maybe for the last time.
Just on the terminator line, where night turned to day, lay the peninsula of Herriot Province. Her family’s estate sat in a meadow, a short distance from the cliff-lined coast. There, her children would be waking to a new dawn—both real, and metaphorical. She sought to etch a picture of her once beautiful land in her mind, the land which generations of her family had toiled over. Deep green tracts of lush forests surrounded the rough-cut stone of her manor while beyond, the vibrant blue Lestan Ocean bordered the peninsula. A small village, quaint in appearance, where
But also, from her elevated position in orbit, she saw the brutal craters and blemishes still unrepaired from the last war—the Great War—marring the land. The war the now dead Galton Imperium had lost so badly. The reason why she, and millions of others, had heeded this new call to action, united under a new banner and with a new cause.
A cause irresistible in its clarion call. Especially to the youth.
To take revenge. To take back their honor. To finish what their parents had started.
And to take their rightful destiny.
Her console chimed and the stern, scarred face of Field Marshal Richter Galen appeared on the HUD, obliterating the view of her home, bringing her musing to a crashing halt.
“All units of Army Group Alpha: Rain Fire Phase Two is a go.” The marshal paused. For dramatic effect, or through nervousness at what he was about to unleash, Hest didn’t know. But the pause didn’t last long. “In Father Terra’s name, execute.”
Hest pressed her head back against the leather headrest. She took a deep breath in, even as before her came a dizzying ripple of flashes. Dozens. Hundreds, then thousands of bursts of red light washed over Galton. So many, it would turn the night side of the world to a hellish day.
A brightness grew within the cockpit, its intensity turning the world before her to monochrome. Then even that was obliterated by the fierce light.
The blinding brightness disappeared as if a switch had been thrown. Galton had been replaced. She found herself hovering over another planet, the Orillion Republic world of Asteria in the Thuine System, her jump drive tuned to bring her to a sub-orbital velocity.
Glistening spider webs of cities crossed the night side, already turned a blurred orange as flames tore across them from the Aerospace Corps’ softening attack in Rain Fire Phase One. She craned her neck up. The number of stations and ships in Asteria’s orbit was so dense as to be visible to the naked eye. And directly above her loomed the nearest of the Republic’s massive fortresses: huge weapon-encrusted asteroids hauled into the world’s orbit a decade before.
But it wasn’t a serene vision.
Streamers of weapons fire lashed across the vista. The Republicans were good. They hadn’t hesitated. They had responded decisively to the swarms of Hegemony fighters tearing through them and the hordes of jump mechs appearing in their vicinity.
They may not have hesitated, but they hadn’t responded effectively.
The huge cannons and myriad weapons of the orbital fortresses were designed to ward off a conventional assault. To deal with fleets led by capital ships spiraling into orbit from above, not hundreds of fighters striking at them from below. And definitely not thousands of jump mechs screaming down to the surface of the world they hung over.
No, the Aerospace Corps, the fighter and bomber arm of the Hegemony’s military, couldn’t fight the Republic on their terms. So Galton had changed those terms to ones they could win.
The gently curved line of the horizon crept up the cockpit window as her mech fell from orbit. The fires from re-entry already flickering up the war machine’s hull. She felt the buffeting of entry as she hit the atmosphere proper. Spread across her vision, she could see thousands of fiery streaks plummeting with her. Her jump mech rocked as a squadron of S-91 Wolf Space Superiority fighters blurred past vertically down, the agile craft plummeting to the surface ahead of her invasion force leaving a trail of turbulence.
Anti-aerospace fire opened up from the surface. Wispy spirals of missiles, ineffective against the agile fighters’ electronic warfare suites, were deadly against the vulnerable mechs. Flak blossomed all around her. Streamers of pulse fire arced across the sky, both from above and below.
The clouds of descending jump mechs were riddled with a staccato of explosions. Hest felt herself being thrust back and forth within the tight confines of her cockpit, knowing death could come at any time with no more warning than seeing her mech disintegrate around her, leaving her to fall screaming to the surface.
One of her platoon mates exploded next to her as a missile slammed into the falling mech, turning it into a shower of debris tumbling alongside her. She gritted her teeth, her fear turning to anger at the loss. Another son or daughter of Galton dead—along with many others—before they’d even truly engaged the enemy.
She forced down the anguish at the loss. Now was not the time to mourn.
Hest glanced at the altimeter as she punched through a misty layer of stratus cloud. One hundred thousand feet. Close enough.
“AA fire is heavy. All mechs drop pods.” She didn’t wait for an acknowledgment; instead, she reached up and flicked four switches. With a series of thuds, the drop pods released from the mech’s back and plunged down alongside her amid a shower of chaff and flares, a probably vain attempt to ward off the fire seeking her out.
All around, the radar returns multiplied as the others did the same. Thousands of mechs each loosed four drop pods containing a soldier.
But even that impressive force would be a drop in the ocean against the resources of an entire world.
Among the descending cloud of jump mechs and personnel drop pods, assault shuttles plunged down, adding thousands more troops to the fray. And far above, the heavy transports containing tens of thousands more soldiers would already be entering the system, perfectly synchronized for when…
