Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (19 page)

Antipersonnel mines exploded, triggered by Abdul’s last-ditch attempt to save himself, but it was too late. Suddenly Baka-Sa was there, rolling into the cyborg’s enormous shadow, looking up at camouflaged metal. He wanted to detonate the pack himself, to control his last few moments of existence, but that was denied him.

Seeing Baka-Sa’s success via his high-powered spotting scope, and not inclined to take any chances, Dagger Commander Enora-Ka activated the remote triggering device. Baka-Sa, and the legionnaire known to his friends as Abdul, died in the same flash of light.

The second quad, the one covering the convoy’s eastern flank, survived the initial assault, but lost both legs on one side, and was effectively immobilized. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, a full fifty percent of the APCs in the first half of the convoy, or the part fully enmeshed in the Hudathan kill zone, had been destroyed by prepositioned command-detonated mines. So, badly outnumbered, and stripped of a good deal of her mobility, Norwood had little choice but to retreat.

Three legionnaires died while trying to pull the second quad’s brain box, and more would have made the attempt, if the cyborg in question hadn’t threatened to fire on them, and promised to cover their retreat. And cover them she did, hurling a sleet of lead in every direction as the APCs pulled back, hunting the Hudathans like rats in a gravel pit.

Twice the APC Norwood was riding was blown out from under her, twice she was helped to safety, and twice she stopped to pull dead and dying soldiers out of the wreckage. And always with the same thoughts burning through her mind. Where had the weapons come from? How had they done it? And what could they possible hope to gain?

Because no matter how many humans they killed in the coming hours, and given the reports coming from Landing Zones One and Three, the butcher’s bill would be high indeed, she could
still
call for reinforcements, or retreat to her fortress in the sky and sterilize the entire planet from there. And the aerospace fighters were still up, too, ready to inflict damage.

A sniper opened fire from the cover of a recently repaired stone wall. Lead spanged off metal and Norwood ducked. A huge bandage-wrapped hand touched her shoulder. It was Meyers, wounded, grimy, but still smiling. “It’s the Bear, ma’am. He says it’s urgent.”

Norwood grimaced and accepted the hand-held com set. If her XO wanted something it would be important. A shoulder-launched missile hit an APC and detonated with a sharp, cracking sound. Her latest vehicle lurched and someone started to scream. “Yeah, Ernie . . . what’s up?”

The
Old Lady’s
skipper was a big man, made seemingly bigger by the personality he projected, and the entire Ops Center hung on his every word. Quite a few of the SUR-CAMs were still operational and provided live coverage of the battle. “We’ve got trouble, General, big trouble.”

“Gee, Ernie, thanks for the insight.”

The naval officer ignored Norwood’s sarcasm. “No, boss, I mean
real
trouble, fleet-sized trouble. There are approximately fifty ships. Each and every damned one of them is a ninety-six-point-eight percent match with known Hudathan designs. They dropped hyper ten minutes ago and are headed this way.”

Norwood felt her heart sink. Suddenly it all made sense. The purpose of the ground action had been to weaken the battle station. The destruction of the battle station would be but the first highly symbolic blow in an all-out war to destroy the Confederacy. And it was her fault. Every decision she’d made had been predicated on the same faulty assumption: that the Hudathans were unarmed. How they obtained the arms no longer mattered. The damage was done. She chose her words with care.

“I’ll attempt to regroup in the LZ, Ernie . . . but things don’t look very good. Program a full flight of message torps. I want five-hundred-percent redundancy on all priority-one destinations. Give ’em what we have so far . . . and tell them to get ready . . . this is only the beginning.”

Big Bear nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And, Ernie?”

“Yes, General?”

“Pull our air support . . . use them to attack the Hudathan fleet . . . and make the bastards pay.”

Captain Ernie Big Bear looked up at the screen. He knew he’d never see Norwood again, not in the physical world anyway, and wanted to cry. But warriors don’t cry, not with the entire Ops Center looking on, so he didn’t. “Roger that, General . . . Good luck . . . Ops out.”

Norwood handed the com set to Meyers. “All right, Sergeant . . . let’s fall back on the airstrip. Warn the perimeter guards and order the Trooper IIs to dig in.”

Meyer’s reply was lost in the sound of a tremendous explosion. The Hudathans had detonated an enormous mine under the up-till-now undamaged battle tank. It was built to survive such explosions and did. But one of the machine’
s massive fans had been damaged, forcing the tank to remain where it was. Explosions rippled across its surface as the Hudathans unleashed a storm of shoulder-launched missiles. The marines answered by traversing their still-potent weapons across the surrounding ruins, tracking and eventually finding many of their attackers.

Norwood wanted to come to the tank’s assistance, wanted to rescue the crew, but knew it was hopeless. A hundred yards separated the slowly retreating convoy from the now-isolated tank and every inch of it was swept by enemy fire.

A hand grabbed her arm, pulled her towards the rear of the vehicle, and down the ramp. Norwood looked back to see that smoke had started to boil up from the badly damaged engine. The next piece of bad news came with mind-numbing speed.

A grimy face appeared next to hers. She had seen it before but couldn’t put a name to it. “We got through to the landing zone, ma’am. They’re cut off and taking heavy fire. Two of the drop ships were destroyed by command-detonated mines, a Trooper II is down, another is damaged, and the entire west side of the perimeter is under heavy pressure. Lieutenant Alvarez requests permission to abandon sixty percent of the LZ and consolidate her position.”

Random thoughts chased important thoughts through Norwood’s mind. Alvarez? What about Captain Horowitz? Dead or wounded. All was not lost, though. Yes, two of the landing craft had been destroyed, and so had at least fifty percent of her force. The remaining ships would be sufficient if they could reach them. “Permission granted. Tell Alvarez to defend the remaining ships.”

The face nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

The next fifteen minutes passed with agonizing slowness as the convoy tried to disengage and the Hudathans refused to cooperate. Then, just when Norwood could see the smoke pouring up from the vicinity of the landing strip, Poseen-Ka triggered the second ambush. It was as he had intended to be, the blow that broke the convoy’s spine.

The hand-dug trench ran the width of the road along which the convoy had traveled and was packed with explosives. When detonated, the resulting explosion threw soldiers fifty feet in the air, cut an APC loaded with wounded marines in half, and disabled two more.

Norwood, walking backwards and firing from the hip, had her feet knocked out from under her. The ground hit hard. She tried to rise, saw a stump where her left foot had been, and started to scream. Meyers appeared, applied a tourniquet, and injected something into her thigh. Then, ignoring her orders to the contra
ry, the master sergeant tossed the general over a massive shoulder, and jogged towards the drop zone. A mere handful of survivors, twenty at best, followed along behind.

 

The battle for
Battle Station Alpha XIV,
better known to the humans as
The Old Lady
, went entirely according to plan. The
Hudathan plan,
as visualized and carried out by none other than Grand Marshal Hisep Rula-Ka, onetime protégé to War Commander Niman Poseen-Ka, father of the Hudathan Cyber Corps, and intellectual architect of the coming war.

Upon emerging from hyperspace, it had come as no surprise to him that the weapons he had so carefully placed in his former leader’s hands had not only been used, but used in a strategically thoughtful manner, weakening the human battle station, and opening it to the very real possibility of an attack from below.

Now, as his attack ships slashed their way in through the human fighters, victory seemed certain. The only items left unresolved were the number of ships destroyed, the number of lives lost, and the fate of his old comrade. Would Poseen-Ka emerge alive? It wouldn’t make much difference to the overall war effort, but he’d look good on the propaganda holos, and the old fart would make a good ally in the days to come.

Rula-Ka sat in his oval-shaped command center, his back comfortably protected by two inches of solid steel, and watched the three-dimensional holo that dominated the center of the room. The other fourteen niches were empty due to the fact that his immediate subordinates were spread out over the fleet.

Another officer might have been busy issuing commands, giving orders that no one needed, or generally getting in the way. But not Rula-Ka. No, he had learned the art of war from Niman Poseen-Ka, and knew that less was more. Yes, he thought contentedly, a well-thought-out plan, executed by well-trained troops, needs only the occasional nudge or adjustment in order to succeed.

Such seemed to be the case as the lights that represented individual human fighters winked out one by one, and the battle station’s main batteries were engaged. Not without loss of course, because the assault cost Rula-Ka a carrier, a cruiser, and two light destroyers, some twenty-five hundred lives in all. But well worth the price. The Hudathan forced himself to relax and savor the moment. The old saying was correct. “A dish delayed tastes all the sweeter for the waiting.”

 

Poseen-Ka wound his way through a maze of crumbled walls, rusted vehicles, and twisted steel. The human bodies, interspersed here and there with th
eir Hudathan counterparts, were like a bloody trail that led towards the airstrip. There were a great number of them and it seemed unlikely that anything more than a handful had escaped the second ambush.

As the Hudathan war commander reached what had been the outermost line of human defenses, the scene changed. Here the Hudathan bodies lay like waves lapping on a beach, each having conquered just a little more sand, until the last line of bodies was intermixed with those belonging to the defenders.

Poseen-Ka passed what remained of a burned-out Trooper II, its massive body dwarfing the three- and four-hundred-pound Hudathans who lay dead around it, a giant among Liliputians.

Then came the weapons pits, which would also serve as ready-made graves for the men and women who had died in them, and a series of serpentine skid marks. Poseen-Ka could imagine the humans, many of them wounded, dragging their heaviest weapons back towards hastily prepared backup positions, and firing till attrition wore them down. Now they lay alongside their enemies, an interspecies jumble of arms and legs, their blood commingled in the dirt beneath them.

Poseen-Ka paused, looked out over the battlefield, and waited for the sense of jubilation that should surely come. It didn’t. He felt only sadness at the use to which his intelligence and creativity had been put.

The war commander continued his walk. A berm stood in the way and he climbed to the top of it. Two ships had been destroyed and were still on fire. The rest stood untouched and were the subjects of intensive scrutiny by teams of pilots and technicians who hadn’t flown Hudathan ships in twenty years, much less human models, all of which were reasonably new.

But it had to be done. Horrible though the slaughter was, even more would be necessary. The battle station was a threat, and threats must be destroyed.

A trooper approached. His body was filthy, and blood stained his rags, but his weapon was clean. His salute was crisp with reborn pride. “Three of the humans continue to live. Do you wish to interrogate them?”

Poseen-Ka had little interest in whatever the humans might have to say but wanted to see them. He followed the trooper to a place where three humans sat propped up against some sandbags. Guards stood all around. There were two males and a female. All had been wounded. It took him a moment to recognize Norwood. She had aged since the last time he had seen her and was white from loss of blood. Her eyes were as he remembered them, though, filled with intelligence and carefully focused animosity. She spoke his language with a heavy accent. “You survived.”

“As did you.”

“But not for long.”

“No,” Poseen-Ka agreed soberly, “not for long. It was a mistake to let you live. I won’t make it twice.”

Norwood nodded. “I didn’t think you would.”

The Hudathan drew his never-before-fired side arm, released the safety, and aimed it at her head. Norwood spent the last microsecond of her life wondering why she had been destined to survive the first battle for Worber’s World only to die in the second. She took the first bullet, followed by a semiconscious Meyers, and a tight-lipped com tech. It took three additional hours to load the human ships, lift, and close with the battle station.

 

Clemmons lived long enough to see the end. There wasn’t much need for electronic warfare specialists after the main batteries were destroyed and the aliens forced their way in through Lock Number 4, so the technician donned her space armor and joined the marines. Energy weapon in hand, she followed a ragtag squad of volunteers down a smoke-filled corridor, and wished she were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Everyone knew the Hudathans didn’t take prisoners, not because they were cruel, but there was no logical reason to do so. After all, the Hudathans reasoned, why risk your life to kill the enemy, then allow them to live? It didn’t make alien sense.

Besides, live prisoners were a continual threat, and anyone who didn’t believe that could take a look at the gaunt scarecrow-like figures who had made their way up from the planet’s surface and forced their way in through Lock Number 12. Not that it got them very far, since they lacked space armor, and were temporarily trapped in a single airtight compartment.