Knight's Move (38 page)

Her console bleeped.  Firing plans had just been sent to her from the flagship, assigning targets to
Extreme
.  She skimmed them quickly, wondering just what they were; the targeting staff hadn't bothered to include any identification details when they’d sent the targeting data, either as a mercy or to discourage mutiny.  They could be anything from alien refugee camps to schools and orphanages for human children.

They wouldn't shoot at civilians,
she tried to tell herself.  But the attack on Xenophon was an order of magnitude more savage than any previous attacks.  Taking out the battlestation alone had killed over a thousand Colonial Militia personnel; targeting the freighters was both a direct and indirect attack on civilians and their livelihoods.  For some reason, the raiders had switched to different tactics and there was no way to know what they were being ordered to target.

Sandy glanced over at her superior, wondering if she could mutiny successfully.  But she knew that she was unarmed, while the collar around her neck could paralyse or kill her within seconds, once they knew that she was turning against them.  And she was hardly essential personnel; she might have manned a tactical console, but all she really had to do was implement the firing patterns sent from the flagship.  A trained monkey could have done as much without being paid.  There was nothing she could do to save Xenophon.

Hating herself, she tapped a switch.  The light cruiser started to launch KEWs towards the planet.

***

President Coffey had not rested on his laurels.  A war hero, the son of two other war heroes, he’d taken advantage of the end of the war to set up a hidden command and control station near the city, but far away enough to ensure some safety if – when – Xenophon was attacked again.  After all, the planet was a supply hub and a known source of manpower for the Colonial Militia.  The real surprise would be
never
being attacked again.  His security team had whisked him to the bunker as soon as the orbital battlestation was destroyed.   There, he'd watched helplessly as the destroyer and starfighters were obliterated one by one.

“They’re heading down towards the low orbitals,” the operator informed him.  “We’re losing orbital stations now.”

Coffey wasn't surprised.  It wasn't easy for anyone, even the Federation, to monitor events in orbit and deep space from the ground.  Taking out the orbital satellites blinded the defenders in more ways than one.  Once they had secured the orbitals, they’d start hammering the planet into submission ... or merely start destroying the cities and settlements from orbit.  And the thrice-damned alien refugee camp.  The memory made him scowl.  He’d wanted to talk his government into allowing the aliens provisional citizenship – they did know how to work with captured Dragon equipment – but the scars of the war ran too deep.  Congress had voted against it five to one.

“Get the troops spread out,” he ordered.  It was pointless – the defenders were already scattered – but he couldn't just say nothing.  “And then ...”

He shook his head.  “Was there any response to our distress call?”

“Nothing,” the operator said.  “And now the satellites are gone, we cannot pick up any response that might be sent.”

“Makes you wonder what we pay taxes for,” Coffey muttered, although he knew the answer.  Their taxes had paid for the giant orbital battlestation, the same battlestation that was now nothing more than a cloud of debris.  Xenophon should have been safe – and secure.  If they survived this, he promised himself, heads were going to roll.  “We’ll just have to pray ...”

“Incoming,” the operator snapped.  “They’re launching projectiles!”

Coffey came to his feet and stared at the display.  The projectiles were scorching their way through the atmosphere, coming down in and around the city.  None of them, he noted, were targeted on the bunker; whatever security leak had allowed the raiders to take out the battlestation hadn't been
completely
comprehensive.  But then, no one off-world had been told about the bunker.  It had been Xenophon’s secret.

That paranoia might have saved our lives,
he thought numbly.  The projectiles had targeted military bases, communications centres and government buildings, but they'd completely missed the bunker or the landline network they used to issue orders. 
There has to be a leak on Fairfax
. 
A big one
.

He watched, helplessly, as the targets were destroyed.  Thankfully, if one good thing had come out of the first raids, it was that they had an evacuation plan in place for both civilians and soldiers.  If the enemy had hoped to cripple resistance, they would be disappointed.  And if they tried to land, there would drop right into the teeth of the planet’s firepower. 

Red icons blinked up on the display.  “They hit the alien camp, sir,” the operator said.  “The weapons were dirty nukes, not conventional KEWs.  If any of the buggers survived that strike, they’ll be dead of radiation poisoning within the week.”

“So much for their claims,” Coffey snarled.  Whatever the so-called Colonial Liberation Front wanted, screwing up the local ecosystem would convince most of the colonies that they were dangerous lunatics with starships.  “They want to kill us, not set us free.”

Another red icon blinked up, then faded away.  “That was the last projectile, sir,” the operator informed him.  “It’s gone quiet.”

“They’re planning to land at the spaceport,” Coffey guessed.  There was
one
target on the soil that might be worth a raid, rather than a quick bombardment followed by a retreat into hyperspace.  It would require audacity, but the raiders certainly seemed to have
that
.  “Warn the defenders to be ready.  I want those bastards
hurt
.”

***

“Bombardment pattern complete, sir,” Dana reported.  “All targets destroyed; I say again, all targets destroyed.”

She paused, significantly.  “One target needed to be hit twice.  The tactical officer flubbed the first shot.”

“You can see to his discipline,”
Jason promised her.  KEWs were easy to produce if one had an asteroid and a few hours to do some mining, but it was the principle of the thing.  A sloppy operator could not be tolerated.  Besides, missiles and torpedoes were far harder to replace.  The colonials would probably get a great deal stricter about weapons transfers though their space after Xenophon.  “And now ...”

He paused, considering the situation.  They had control of the orbitals, they could see everything that moved on the planet below ... and they had at least an hour, maybe longer, before help could arrive from the nearest star.  There was time to move ahead with the second objective.

“Deploy the landing force,” he ordered.  “I want everything in that spaceport in our hands within an hour.”

***

Corporal Jackson O’Hara watched nervously through the passive sensors as the enemy shuttles headed down towards the spaceport.  He’d expected to die at any moment, smashed flat by a KEW before he even realised what had happened, but it seemed the brass were correct and the raiders wanted the spaceport.  No one seemed entirely sure if they wanted the supplies or if they intended to turn it into a bridgehead to land more troops to overrun the planet, yet it hardly mattered.  All that mattered was that they were finally coming in range of his weapons.

“Hold your fire until they're right on top of us,” Sergeant Prendergast muttered.  “And then set the system to automatic and run.”

Jackson nodded, checking that his rifle was still where he’d left it.  Their vehicle was dug in and camouflaged, but they all knew that they would only get one or two shots off before the enemy returned fire.  The HVM-launcher was a makeshift piece of crap compared to some of the armoured vehicles the Federation had designed; the colonies had had to work with what they had, rather than the Federation’s unlimited resources.  Among other things, it lacked the sophisticated countermeasures the Federation brought to the battlefield.  The moment they fired, they'd tell the enemy exactly where they were.

The enemy shuttles seemed overconfident, he noted, or untrained.  They weren't dropping armoured troops, not like the Dragons or the Federation Marines; they seemed to expect no resistance at all.  Unless it was a trick, of course.  But the shuttles continued to descend, their drives slowing their fall as they came towards the spaceport.  Jackson checked the firing system and let out a sigh of relief when it worked perfectly.  It wasn't uncommon for a piece of equipment to fail out in the field, for no apparent reason, particularly when it was needed desperately.

“Fire,” the sergeant ordered.

Jackson flipped a switch, then stood, caught up his rifle and ran for the hatch.  A dull roar echoed through the vehicle as the first high-velocity missile launched from the rack above their heads, heading straight for the enemy shuttles.  Unless the enemy were very lucky, they wouldn’t have time to register the attack, let alone evade the missiles.  He heard the second and third missiles launching as he ran from the vehicle, knowing that they had split-seconds to get away before the enemy returned fire.  They jumped into the trench twenty metres from the vehicle and turned, just in time to see the first enemy missile strike the ground.  It missed its target, but the second was dead on.  Their vehicle vanished in a colossal fireball.

“Good God,” the sergeant muttered.

The enemy attack had been shattered.  A dozen vehicles had opened fire, taking out at least thirty shuttles before the remainder had started to deploy countermeasures and return fire.  He could see fires burning where the enemy shuttles had crashed, coming down so hard that even armoured troopers were unlikely to survive.  It was hard to hear anything over the din as the enemy missiles slammed into the spaceport; he clutched his rifle and waited for the enemy to land.  If they made a proper assault after this, they’d meet the defenders on the ground.

And we might have taught them a lesson
, he thought.  But he knew that it wouldn't end well if the enemy broke off completely.  They'd almost certainly hit the spaceport from orbit, just out of spite.  If they couldn't have the supplies, they wouldn't want anyone else getting them either.

***

Jess Armstrong considered herself a practical woman.  It had been that sense of practicality that had guided her from being a farm girl on a border world to joining the Federation Marines, where she'd known she could make a contribution.  After all, she’d been shooting and hunting champion on her homeworld before the Dragons had landed and they’d been forced to flee.  It had been quite humbling to realise that Marine snipers racked up far more interesting and extraordinary kills than anything she’d done on the farm, or that her shooting wasn’t good enough to join the elite, but she’d knuckled down and worked hard to become the best Marine she could be.

Watching the raiders fight and die was acutely painful.  If any of their leaders had been in the Marine Corps, they would have been charged with deliberately killing their own subordinates, an offense so vile that they would probably have been shot after the court martial.  Only a handful had any real combat experience and most of them had been dishonourably discharged for one reason or another; several of them, she was sure, had made up stories of their military exploits out of whole cloth.  She wouldn't have cared – apart from the one who had claimed to be a Federation Marine and hadn't even bothered to research the patter – but it offended her sense of how a military operation should be carried out.

“Get the shuttles down on the ground,” someone shouted over the communications network.  A moment later, someone else shouted a contradictory order, trapping the raiders in the air where the defenders could shoot the shit out of them.  Jess had always felt helpless when the shuttles had been landing, even with Marine pilots who knew to get them down as quickly as possible, but this was absurd.  She felt naked as well as helpless.  “Get down ...”

A dull crash rang through the shuttle as it struck the ground. 
Bad landing
, part of Jess’s mind noted, as she jumped to her feet and led the way to the hatch.  Her troops were ill-prepared for fighting; she’d seen recruits who had failed their first day at Boot Camp who would have handled it better.  Half of them were still throwing up on the deck; thankfully, they hadn't donned their helmets in flight.  She bellowed orders, wondering absently if she would be charged with treason if she were caught, and kicked open the hatch.  Wonder of wonders, half of her troops followed her out into hell.