Empire of the Fallen, page 11
‘Just looking to get back to work,’ Vondur said, truthfully. ‘The sooner I can get planetside, the better.’
Soto snorted. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that, don’t worry,’ she said. Her eyes took on a vacant look for a second while she consulted her IHD. ‘One minute,’ she said, and Vondur sat in silence for five while she sat there and authored some private dispatches. ‘Bloody kags,’ she muttered, then fixed her attention back on him. ‘You were on the station for the latest?’
‘The attack?’
‘Got within five million klicks. There’s supposed to be an exclusion zone around Cobalta of a billion. Fleet don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. All the decent commanders got themselves killed in the last war; now we’re going to have to fight a bigger one with officers barely out of puberty.’ She shuffled some hardcopy papers around her desk before clasping her hands in front of her. ‘I won’t bullshit you, Captain. We’re having a hell of a time here. I don’t know what Staff Cox has told you, but the kags down there are falling over themselves to blow us to shit. We’ve lost two Goliaths already. That’s ten per cent of the squadron. To kaygryn. Maybe a few years ago it was easy to laugh at the kags as a big galactic joke, but they’re running the show now. We don’t have the UNIS assets to get us any decent intelligence, no-one within ten systems speaks Argish, and we’re running on all the old junk that survived the Ascendancy War. So my advice to you is this: stay sharp, stay frosty, and do not underestimate these fuckers. It’s the Wild West out here now. Brass has told us that the Kaygryn Empire, which we’re all now officially acknowledging as not a goddamn fairy tale, is going to rip through the Ascendancy and hit the UN ricky-fucking-tick. That effectively puts Cobalta on the front line. Me, you, my CO, all the COs going up to MECHCOM and Halo Arch, we need people who can get the job done, so lay down some fire, lay down the law, and keep yourself alive. No offence, Ben, but if they’re giving me a polished turd from Arrengate North as a front-line captain, then we’re going to need all the people we can get. Understood?’
Vondur nodded, mute, adrenaline coursing through his system. ‘Can I have Cox back?’ he asked eventually. ‘We worked together in 11 Squadron.’
Soto regarded him for a moment. ‘Sergeant Ellis is the NCO in 2nd Flight. He is perfectly capable.’
Vondur cleared his throat. ‘Still, Ma’am, if it’s all the same to you… I’d really appreciate it.’
Soto sighed loudly. She tapped her fingers on the table for a few uncomfortable seconds. ‘Fine. Anything else?’
Vondur felt a wave of relief wash through him. It wasn’t the best impression to give his new squadron, but they would get over it. ‘Where am I going?’ he asked.
‘We’re switching the rotations over tonight. 2nd and 3rd are planetside, UNAF Cobalta East. 1st is moving up to the Crossland. ROI.’
Vondur nodded. ‘And how do I—’
‘I’ll have my adjutant send through your transport details. Your Goliath is being refitted on base. It’ll be ready tomorrow. You’ll have a full list of operational priorities by 07:00 local, but I can tell you now you’ll be patrolling the border.’
‘Right.’
Soto fixed him in the eye. ‘Captain, is everything all right?’
Vondur nodded. ‘Just tired,’ he said lamely.
Soto looked him up and down. ‘You might think me callous, Mr Vondur, but believe it or not, your wellbeing is one of my priorities.’
Vondur bit his tongue. How on earth could he begin to describe how he was feeling? ‘I’m fine, honestly.’
‘So CR would have me believe,’ Soto remarked.
‘Will we be getting a squadron leader?’ he asked, trying to deflect the conversation.
Soto shook her head. ‘It is not anticipated that we will be carrying out squadron-level operations on-world. If that changes, one of the flight captains will be breveted.’
‘So you’re my POC?’
‘I’m your POC. Will that be all?’
Vondur nodded.
‘Fine. Tell Cox he’s been reassigned, will you?’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
‘Good. Dismissed.’
SCORCHED EARTH
‘Area denial, area denial, area denial. This is the name of the game. I don’t care what you have to do. Destroy a whole planet for all I care. If we can’t have it, they can’t have it.’
UNAF General Gus Eisenhofer ahead of the infamous Ascendancy War campaign, Operation Black Belt
‘All clear, Fleet Marshal. We’ll be ready to begin the evacuation in the next thirty minutes.’
Scarcroft looked up from his reverie. ‘Good,’ he said, but his voice was muffled by the scarf wrapped tightly around his nose and mouth, and what sound did make it through was whipped away by the frigid, gale-force winds. Instead of trying again, he gave the man—a Marine captain, Roque—a thumbs-up.
Roque nodded. Beside him, an Alsatian, wearing an olfactory enhancer and begoggled like the rest of them, barked twice.
Scarcroft pulled the collar of his thick Fleet-issue trench coat up about his ears and looked out ahead. He was standing on the top of an ice bluff twenty metres high, looking out across a plain of snow currently packed with Titan heavy landers and Manticore troop transports. Naval-grade halogens cast piercing cones of white light through the blizzard, and backup beacons of red and blue smoke fizzed and spat, barely fit for purpose in the driving wind. He could just make out hundreds of marines below, trudging through the carpet of snow in their dull olive Mantix, helmet torches on full beam. Further in the distance, barely visible in what was fast becoming a total white-out, two huge tranches of provari civilians waited, marshalled by flares and metal barriers. Above them, a dozen ships of the 6th Fleet 15th Solar Operations Group waited in the low-orbit band, marked out against the cloud by turquoise IHD markers.
He’d been appointed to oversee the evacuation of ten Ascendancy worlds bordering the Omadan Sprint, adjacent to the Lower Vadian Spiral where the 16th and 17th crusade fleets had once marshalled. Ten Ascendancy worlds, nearly one billion provar. Even with the entire Cosmic Disaster Contingency Craft Fleet—which he didn’t have, since Francis Haps had half of it—it would take months to ship them all off-world. At least four, the latest estimates said.
And they had two weeks.
Well, Ellisburg’s briefing had been clear enough: prioritise, prioritise, prioritise. The backwaters, containing a third of the evacuee population, were to be dealt with last. The big cities, where all the useful provar lived—the soldiers, teachers, doctors, scientists and intelligentsia—were to be evacuated first. Anyone who caused a fuss, who put up a fight, who dragged their feet: they were to be left.
Scarcroft, who was used to nuking worlds rather than evacuating them, publicly found the whole idea preposterous, though privately he would admit that there was some logic to it. If the Kaygryn Empire was going to burn through the Ascendancy in as little as six weeks, as some tacticians were predicting, better to have the lion’s share of the useful provar on UN worlds. They could stick them all in the empty polar ice caps and give them all weapons. Better to have them defending UN territory than doomed provari—and if they were all killed, then who cared? Scarcroft may have had more strategic foresight than most, but he disliked the aliens as much as the common man.
‘Fleet Marshal, Commander Wolff would like a word, if you’ve got a moment,’ crackled his earpiece. The link was weak and tinny in the storm.
‘Tell him I’ll be right there,’ Scarcroft said into his comlink.
‘Aye, sir.’
He turned and trudged through the shin-high snow, much of which had been compacted to treacherous ice sheet by the comings and goings of hundreds of Fleet personnel clad in heavy Mantix suits. Beyond, bathed in the light of halogen lamp rigs, a prefab module sat in the wind-whipped mist, half-buried in snowdrifts. A solitary Goliath stood next to it like a sentinel, its armour panels arctic white-and-grey, maintaining a silent, vigilant scangrid.
He reached the module, returning the salutes of a few marines patrolling the perimeter, and ducked through the door. Inside, half a dozen men and women stood around a desk in the middle of the room, studying a holo. Most were wearing either Mantix or thick arctic warfare coats, or both. Breath steamed from every mouth.
‘As you were,’ Scarcroft said, and everyone resumed what they were doing. He pulled his scarf down and his goggles up. Commander Wolff, the ranking Marine stationed aboard the UNS Galahad, accosted him.
‘We’ll be ready to start the evacuation in the next thirty minutes,’ he said. His face was ruddy from the cold, and ice crusted his beard.
‘So I’ve been informed,’ Scarcroft said. ‘How many?’
‘Two million this week. Tranches Alpha through Delta are here now. Echo through Hotel starting in two days’ time. The rest by the end of the week.’
Scarcroft nodded. ‘Good. Very good.’ From the holo next to him, a rotating, three-dimensional map of Shaddai appeared. A small blue dot, indicating their position, appeared somewhere near the northern pole. Other provari settlements appeared as orange squares.
‘Lynx Two has already begun embarking,’ Wolff said, indicating the relevant settlements with his fingers. ‘They’ll be done in three days.’
‘And Lynx Three?’ Scarcroft said, pointing to a settlement two hundred kilometres south of their position.
Wolff scratched his beard idly, sending ice crystals tumbling into the folds of his scarf. ‘Still having trouble with theocracy forces. We’ve been hitting them with rail but…’ He shrugged. ‘If they don’t sort themselves out, we’ll leave them.’
Scarcroft nodded. ‘Fine. Don’t waste time. I’ll not lose men to this task. If they want to stay here, let them.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Wolff said. ‘No casualties yet. Most of the wetwork we’re doing is LOAS.’
‘As long as we can spare the tungsten.’
The holo view shifted again, to their low-orbit holdings. Ten fat-bellied UN ships were outlined in turquoise, their names appearing above in digital lettering.
‘CDCCs Protector and Nebula will be ready to debark after the first two tranches. I recommend they leave for Roma Vega ASAP. It’s only a ten-hour turnaround.’
‘Yes, let’s keep the evacuation rolling,’ Scarcroft said. ‘I don’t want these CDCCs getting jammed up. Tell me about the weapons caches.’
‘Roque,’ Wolff nodded. From behind Scarcroft, the marine captain stepped into view. A long-barrelled railgun, wrapped in white camo strips, was slung across his back.
‘We’ve located thirty ammunition dumps which we’ve got locked for LOAS when we bug out. We’ve set minimum safe distance IHD warnings; some of these caches are going to level ten square klicks.’ He manipulated the holo map, and a series of green icons appeared along the equator. ‘Our SPECWAR detachment is planting AOWs along elevated positions here, here and here, and along this ice shelf. Probably won’t do much, but word from the top is it’s the new SOP.’
‘Waste of good lasers if you ask me,’ Wolff grunted.
Scarcroft shrugged. ‘We’re mining the mid-orbit band; may as well make every world a bitter pill. By the way, I want all the crops destroyed by the end of the week, whatever that arctic weed is they call food. And poison the water.’
Wolff nodded. ‘We’ve got a few hundred tonnes of KCN to take care of that. We’ll soak the crops with gamma to a depth of five klicks. We’re waiting until we know we can feed the evacuees until the end of the week before we destroy all the food supplies. Fleet rations will only take two million mouths so far.’
‘Fine,’ Scarcroft said. ‘Good work, both of you. I’ll see that our Ascendancy liaison is briefed.’
‘Fleet Marshal?’
Scarcroft turned around. A kaygryn—Goyai—was standing in the doorway, wearing UN Fleet-issue arctic warfare garb. One of the dogs outside barked at it.
‘Yes?’ he asked. The kaygryn was a former messenger slave, fluent in Folhourtian Provari and Terran, forced to learn against his will by the provar. Now it was technically emancipated, or so the UN had insisted at the conclusion of the Ascendancy War, though it was now effectively one of Scarcroft’s retainers. It accompanied him wherever the 15th SOG went.
‘Overseer meng’Dama has informed me there is to be a blessing before the embarkation.’
The module’s occupants stirred, exuding a palpable air of irritation.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Wolff muttered angrily, turning back to the holo.
Scarcroft was inclined to agree. Though no-one would say it in front of him for fear of sounding unprofessional, no-one was pleased to be there at all. The evacuation was a wasteful distraction; their time would better be spent fortifying and protecting UN worlds.
‘We have a lot to get on with,’ Scarcroft said to Goyai, wishing that the aliens would keep this silly nonsense to themselves. ‘Tell him we don’t have time for a blessing. If he feels compelled to offer one, he can do it on the Nebula.’
Goyai bowed. ‘Yes, Fleet Marshal, it’s just… he was rather insistent. Being a kaygryn, I’m not sure he will accept what I have to say—even with your executive authority.’
Scarcroft grimaced. He’d neither needed nor wanted the warrant of executive authority bestowed upon him by the Ascendant Feudality, a hardcopy scroll bearing the seal of the provari executor commanding this Prefecture. He’d given it to Goyai in the hope that the kaygryn could dispense with the more irritating duties, but it had evidently been wishful thinking.
‘For God’s sake,’ he muttered under his breath. He turned back to Wolff. ‘We’ll start the embarkation on time. Don’t delay it for this. I’ll speak to this meng’Dama myself.’
‘Sir,’ Wolff said, nodding once.
‘Sir, I should probably—’
‘Yes, you come with me,’ Scarcroft said, interrupting Roque, and the marine captain followed him outside into the blizzard.
The snowfall was increasing, and Scarcroft was forced to use his IHD to pick out a route as they waded through the thick drifts piling up around them. Roque summoned two men and dogs to accompany them, too, since the provar had started using analogue lymph-node bombs which their scanning equipment couldn’t detect.
They moved down the slope an orbital laser had cut into the bluff, standing aside as huge tracked vehicles shifted tonnes of materiel towards the Titans, and pushed their way through the banks of snow clogging up the thoroughfares. Either side of them, olive-green tents flapped madly in the wind, prefab modules accreted slush and snow, and marines and Fleet personnel moved across the sodden ground, shouting and marshalling and otherwise keeping their heads down in the wind. The air was filled with the cycling sound of Manticore engines keeping warm in the white-out and redolent with the smell of exhaust.
They pushed their way through the crowds to where the Titans were, massive, fat-bellied transports, the largest intra-atmospheric vehicle in service with the Fleet. They sat like monoliths in the white haze, projecting huge beams of light around them like rows of hypersled arenas at dusk, winking with red warning lights. Twenty storeys up, Scarcroft could see men moving around in their yellow-lit observation decks, while at ground level, their vast hangars were open, enveloping the huge tracked transporters like a whale ingesting krill.
Here, the going was easier thanks to the furnace-hot downwash of the Titan’s attitudinal thrusters which melted the snow and ice as quickly as it could form, and they strode through the ranks of cyclopean vehicles with a marked improvement in speed until they reached the massive queues of provar waiting beyond. Here, the aliens crushed up against metal gates and hastily erected barriers, overseen by twitchy Mantix-clad marines from prefab guard towers, hundreds of thousands of them packed together like penguins huddling in the Antarctic. A Manticore soared overhead with its hold door open, a watchful sniper leaning out, scanning the crowd.
‘Where is he?’ Scarcroft asked Goyai.
‘He is there, Fleet Marshal,’ the kaygryn said, pointing to a provar bedecked in robes and symbols of office. He was the only provar on the UN side of the gate.
‘Check him with the dogs,’ Scarcroft muttered to Roque, and the captain bade the canine units to give the overseer a thorough sniff.
‘Clear,’ one of the handlers said, giving a thumbs-up through the haze.
Scarcroft sighed as he walked towards the provar, pulling the scarf away from his mouth. ‘Translate,’ he said to the kaygryn.
‘Yes, Fleet Marshal.’
Scarcroft pulled up short in front of the overseer, a relatively gangly and diminutive alien when compared to its martial countrymen. Despite the raging wind-driven sleet, meng’Dama seemed perfectly comfortable in its soaked-through robes.
‘I am Fleet Marshal Scarcroft. I am in command of this operation. We are not having a blessing,’ he snapped. Goyai duly translated. ‘We don’t have time. We’re loading up in ten minutes. Understand?’
When Goyai finished talking, meng’Dama started.
‘He says the blessing is important,’ Goyai said. ‘All provari land is sacred. You despoil it by being here. It will need to be re-consecrated as they leave.’
Scarcroft rolled his eyes. ‘Tell him that he can do whatever the hell he wants, but if it holds up my evacuation by one second, I’ll park a bullet in his head.’ He jabbed Goyai in the chest before he could speak. ‘And don’t sugar coat it.’
‘Y-yes, Fleet Marshal,’ the kaygryn stammered.
‘Come on,’ Scarcroft said to Roque. The light was fading fast. ‘We’re wasting time.’
*
‘I—oh. Sorry to disturb you, sir.’
‘Sloper. You’re not disturbing me. Come in,’ the Vulture said.
