Echoes of War Box Set, page 53
part #1 of Echoes of War Series
“We’re getting lit up by enemy air, Hassan! Are you anywhere in the vicinity?”
“They’re four minutes away from us, Colonel,” Arendse’s voice said through the commlink. “I’ve got a general distress call going out from the onsite sister militant. You got any air-to-air missiles left?”
“I have one LIDAR tracking missile remaining, as well as my neutron cannons,” Amir answered. “What about everyone else?”
“About the same. Several of us are Winchester except for the energy weapons.” Winchester was the code phrase for being out of munitions. “That’ll have to be enough. Christus Vincits, break to heading 165, stand by to engage hostile aircraft!”
Amir adjusted his heading as soon as Arendse spoke; he had planned to regardless of her orders. Leaving David and Calvin alone and without support isn’t happening on my watch. “Christus two acknowledged, steady on new heading 165.” The squadron had collectively decided to shorten their callsigns to Christus; the full name was simply too long for the chaos of combat. “Colonel Cohen, we’re on the way. Hold fast!” he said back to the channel David had broadcasted from; there was no reply.
“Colonel, I am thinking we fire our remaining missiles at long range, then push it up to max thrust and close in,” Arendse said on a private channel.
She’s getting confidence in tactics and her fighter; very good. “That’s exactly what I’d do, Sister,” Amir smiled inside of his flight helmet. “I believe we can scatter their formations, then pick them off one by one.”
“Sounds like a plan to me, Colonel,” Arendse replied, mirth in her voice.
“Let’s make our first volley count,” Amir said, watching the range decrease rapidly with the blob of Monrovian bombers. “I show missile range in thirty seconds!” Allah, please protect my friends and the sisters from the enemy. The wait as his fighter closed to missile range went by in an agonizingly slow manner. It seemed like an eternity had gone by before the familiar tone of LIDAR missile lock sounded on the nearest bomber. “Christus two, Fox three!” Amir yelled, pressing the missile launch button.
The missile dropped free from the underside of Amir’s fighter, its rocket engine kicking on and it roared away at Mach ten toward its hapless target. A few seconds later, the rest of the fighters fired the few air-to-air missiles they had left; five in total. He also saw two surface launches from what he assumed were air defense systems the sisters had onsite. The Monrovians attempted to deploy Chaff and spoof the incoming weapons with ECM, but as before, their technology was utterly ineffective. All five launched missiles connected with their targets; wings blew off aircraft, engines exploded, and five out of twenty-eight bombers were destroyed.
“Christuses, break and engage!” Arendse said as her shout filled the comm channel.
Amir quickly discovered that his fighter was a lot faster than the enemy bombers, and in turn had to slow down by nearly six hundred kilometers per hour. It’s hard to fly this slow without stalling out in a modern space fighter, even when it’s optimized for atmospheric flight. Sliding in behind one of the lumbering bombers, Amir said, “Christus two, guns, guns, guns!” into his mic, even as his finger pulled the trigger. Several direct hits later, another Monrovian craft exploded. He pushed the throttle forward, which increased his forward speed and pressed his body back into the specialized pilot's chair from the G-forces.
The next target was the nearest bomber; Amir turned into its path and met it head on, firing his neutron cannons. Once again, the Monrovian craft exploded in mid-air, its debris raining down on the ground below. Pausing to view an overlay of the battlefield in his HUD, Amir saw they were getting the best of the bombers; now there were only nine left. As he turned toward what he hoped would be his next kill, the missile alarm sounded. No less than forty enemy fighters suddenly appeared on his sensors. His mind thrashed, determining that the only thing that made sense was they had been flying so low to the ground as to evade detection.
“Bandits! Bandits, one o’clock high,” Arendse said from the commlink. “Forty-two bandits confirmed! Christus, abandon pursuit of the bombers, form up into finger four formations and engage the enemy.”
Amir pulled up hard on his flight stick, fighting for altitude and vectoring himself toward Arendse’s fighter to provide her cover; two more friendly craft slid into position, and they roared off toward the enemy. Numerous enemy missile launches occurred, and Amir’s HUD went into overdrive, showing the plots. As before, they were almost all spoofed by the powerful ECM carried by the Phantoms, but the pilots they faced had to know that already.
“They’re heading straight into air combat maneuvering with us, Colonel,” Arendse said through the commlink on the private channel she kept open between the two of them.
“In other words, a dogfight, Sister,” Amir commented softly to himself. There was always a new buzzword or phrase, but pilots preferred the words from many hundreds of years ago. “If we only had missiles left, we could destroy them at decent ranges. Unfortunately, we need to engage them on their terms. If we don’t, they’ll be able to destroy our ground forces with impunity. I don’t care how bad their technology is, troops are sitting ducks against air assets. It’s been that way since the beginning of air combat.”
“We’ll take them, Colonel.”
“Good hunting, Sister,” Amir said, focusing on the incoming enemy, which now split into formations of three fighters each. Steeling himself, his finger stayed on the firing trigger for the neutron cannons as they made the first pass through the Monrovian formation. The speed at which the fighters were closing was so high that it made visual targeting nearly impossible. Amir opened fired as he ripped through the air in the hopes he’d hit something. The rest of the sisters did the same thing, and miraculously, they came out of it unscathed, with several hard kills to their credit.
Arendse’s fighter rolled to the right, tracking a group of three Monrovian craft, and Amir stayed close behind her. He found himself impressed by her natural flying ability; even with limited hours in the Phantom, she was dogfighting like an expert. While she lined up her shot, Amir lined up his, sliding in behind an enemy craft despite its best efforts to throw him off. “Christus two, guns, guns, guns!” Amir called while pulling down the firing trigger. His reward was with another kill.
“Christus one, splash one bandit!” Arendse said as she downed the fighter she was engaging.
The dogfight had degenerated into a tail chase that pilots referred to as a “furball.” Typically, not something CDF pilots had to deal with, as in space most kills occurred as a result of missile hits. This was a challenging battle space for Amir to navigate, especially in the atmosphere where he couldn’t flip his craft around using relative speed and fire on pursuers. Three Monrovians settled into his six, and as Amir was the fighter to the extreme left of the formation, he had no wingman. As his early warning system detected energy weapon fire, he began a series of maneuvers called “the scissors.” Slowing his speed by climbing, he caused the three enemies to overshoot him, and they immediately started a dive, gathering airspeed.
Lining up the shot as the nearest fighter crossed into his forward cone, Amir quickly obtained a hard lock and fired his neutron cannons. Blue fire lashed out from his fighter and reduced another enemy to debris. Thanks to a poor angle taken by the attackers, Amir was able to slide to his right and engage the second fighter, in the same manner, quickly destroying it as well.
The third, though, was made from slightly sterner stuff. Its pilot whipped around in a counter scissors move, and Amir matched him turn for turn. The superiority of the Phantom in thrust-to-weight ratio coupled with its advanced G-force protection for the pilot allowed him to perform incredibly tight turns that would cause a pilot to black out in a less capable craft.
It took five interlocking scissors maneuvers, but he finally lined up the opposing fighter and held the trigger down, sending blue bolts of neutron cannon fire into the fuselage of the Monrovian fighter, which exploded in midair.
Straightening out after the tight-turning fight, Amir realized a split second too late that he had lost situational awareness when incoming fire from a fourth enemy fighter impacted his right wing. The master alarm sounded, and his controls became sluggish. As the enemy craft lined up for the kill, it suddenly exploded.
“Watch your six out here, Colonel,” Arendse said as she flew above the debris cloud. “Not bad shooting, though.”
A sigh left Amir as he contemplated that just a few seconds before, he was inevitably going to die. “Allu Akbar, Sister!”
“That he is, Colonel. Can you still fly?”
“It will take a few minutes for the auto-repair systems of the Phantom to repair my avionics, but yes, I’m still flight and combat capable.”
“Form on me, then. The rest of the bandits appear to be disengaging; we’re going to provide combat air patrol while our ground forces finish mop-up operations.”
“Roger that, Sister,” Amir said, gently nudging his fighter along and not overtaxing the damaged wing. Taking a moment to review the common tactical picture in his HUD, he noted with satisfaction that they had downed three-quarters of the enemy fighters. He hoped that David and Cavin were having similar success far below them on the ground.
David surveyed the mostly smoking ruins of the concentration camp they had just liberated. Fires still burned in several buildings, and a sea of former prisoners were lined up in the main yard being attended to by nuns with medical training. Calvin walked up to him, the visor on his helmet flipped up. “Colonel, you okay?”
David nodded, making eye contact. “Yes, a bit rattled, but okay.”
“You fleet guys don’t get down to the ground enough,” Calvin observed.
“Something like that.”
“There’s something you need to see,” Calvin said gruffly.
“Lead the way.”
With Calvin out in front, the two of them made their way across the camp, walking through destroyed buildings. Propaganda posters were hung everywhere, promising a better life if the inhabitants accepted science and reason. “These guys lay it on thick, don’t they?” David said as he climbed over some rubble.
“Heh, yeah. That’s one way of putting it.”
It took fifteen minutes to reach their destination: a field outside of the camp that held a giant burn pit. Just beyond that area, David could see earth-moving equipment lined up. As he made his way around the bulldozers and backhoes, he discovered a large trench dug in the firm red clay. The stench hit him first, causing nausea and retching inside of him that threatened to make him vomit on the spot. As he peered down into the trench, the cause of the smell was clear; hundreds of bodies littered the ground where they had been tossed… women, children, men, young and old. All shapes, sizes, and colors were represented.
David stood speechless, tears running down his face at the sight.
“Yeah… me too, Colonel,” Calvin said. “I couldn’t believe it at first. I’ve seen so many things, but this is worse than even the League gulags I’ve been a part of liberating.”
David’s mind was full of anger. Someone has to pay. “Where’s the commanding officer of this camp?”
“The sisters have the prisoners rounded up in one of the bunkhouses.”
“Show me.”
Nothing else was said as the two men trudged once again across the camp. David was lost in a private thought process that shifted from sheer rage to despair that he hadn’t known sooner, blaming himself for not being able to help. Arriving at one of the intact bunkhouses, he noticed it had several armed guards stationed at both entrances.
Calvin opened the door.
David walked in first. “Who is the commanding officer of this camp?” he shouted to the room at large.
Every Monrovian soldier in the building stopped what they were doing and looked toward him. A thin, pale man stepped forward, wearing the uniform of the Monrovian National Guard. “I am.”
David’s face was blood red as he stared at the camp commander. “There are thousands of innocent people dead in a ditch outside of this camp. How could you possibly justify doing that to unarmed civilians!”
“I was… following orders.”
“Just following orders…that phrase has been used to explain some of the worst atrocities ever committed by human beings! You wear the uniforms of soldiers, but the soldiers I know don’t murder innocents!” David shouted at the top of his lungs.
“It was voted on. It was the rule of the people. Who are we to say otherwise?”
“You say otherwise because it’s wrong! You call yourself a soldier; you make me sick. Real soldiers defend the weak, protect the innocent; they give their lives so that others might live!” David completely lost control and pulled his sidearm from its place in the holster on his right leg. Pressing it up against the forehead of the commander, he continued. “Give me one reason…one single, solitary reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now!”
“We would’ve all been killed if we didn’t obey. Anyone who resisted was put in prison along with their families!”
“So you had to protect your hides by massacring civilians? You make me sick. I’d gladly take a bullet than become you!”
Calvin reached forward and grabbed David’s arm. “You don’t want to do this, sir. You’re not thinking straight. Come on, put that gun down. This piece of trash will get his.”
David glanced at Calvin for a moment. “When? From whom? When we pull out, you really think there’ll be any accounting for what they’ve done?”
“God will judge him, Colonel Cohen,” Kaufman said, loud and clear in a harsh tone. “Not you or I. Put that gun down before I’m forced to stun you.”
“He shouldn’t be allowed to live after what he’s done. None of them should.”
“That isn’t up to us to decide.”
“Then who is it up to, Sister? God? Last time I checked, God doesn’t appear in a pillar of fire anymore. We’re the methods of implementing His laws.”
“Judge not that you may not be judged. However, you judge another, so shall you be judged,” Kaufman responded.
“That particular phrase isn’t in the Torah, Sister,” David spat back.
Kaufman appeared at David’s side and put her hand on his arm. “How about this… if you can stand here and tell me honestly that you’ve never harmed an innocent, that through inaction, or a mistake, or how did we use to refer to it, oh yes… the fog of war, never taken an action that led to the death of innocent lives, pull the trigger now with my blessing.”
David glanced at her and closed his eyes for a moment, considering what she said. God only knows how many innocents I’ve killed, directly or indirectly in the last eighteen years. Kaufman’s right; it’s not my place to take his life and shooting an unarmed man—no matter what he’s done—is murder. He allowed his hand to drop, and Calvin quickly took the sidearm. “I’m sorry,” he said, stumbling backward. “They can’t get away with it. There’s tens of thousands of people buried out there. They have to pay.” Tears rolled down his face.
“They’ll pay, Colonel,” Kaufman said with conviction. “Either in this life or afterward when God will judge them. Colonel Demood?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Please escort Colonel Cohen back to the shuttles. We won’t speak of this again.”
Calvin nodded and nudged David gently toward the door.
As David was walking out, Calvin turned around. “Listen up. Colonel Cohen’s not the kind of guy that can shoot a disarmed man in cold blood. Me, on the other hand, I’m a different type of guy. Any of you step out of line, try to resist, escape, or evade, and I promise you I’ll put you down like the rabid dogs you are. And I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it. Have a real nice day now.” He turned around and left, leaving Kaufman staring with her mouth open.
19
Hours later, after the sisters had finished evacuating the liberated camp, Sarno walked into her command tent. Sister Kaufman and some of the other nuns were present, along with General Monahan, David, Calvin, and Tural. The same paper map remained; Sarno preferred simple solutions over advanced technology whenever possible. They merely broke down less often. Fixing a fancy tactical display takes money we don’t have. If the map tears, I can print another, she thought.
“Sisters, gentlemen… thank you for coming. I know we’re all weary after today.”
Her statement was met by silence as everyone stared at her. “I felt this situation would be challenging when we took on the mission. I expected there to be losses, and I expected to find things that would cause the soul to wrench itself. What you found today is horrifying, and it’s horrifying that as enlightened as we humans claim to be, such a tragedy could occur. It is yet another example that without God, we have no such enlightenment.”
“Once you reduce someone to a sub-human level, it’s not wrong anymore,” Monahan added. “The Monrovian government is run by a butcher. It’s time we take it out.”
“The order is not here to affect regime change, General,” Sarno replied. How do I get him to accept we’re not going to take out the government?
“What’s the point of our involvement here, then?”
“The point is to evacuate all who wish to leave, General. You may assist with that or not.”
“If the objective is to save those who are being exterminated, the best way to do that is to attack the government directly,” Monahan insisted.
“General,” David cut in. “I think we all get your position. Heck, if I were running this op, I’d probably level Fitzroy’s house and call it a night. But I’m not, and neither are you. We agreed to play by Mother Superior’s rules.”
“Thank you, Colonel Cohen,” Sarno said. This youngster can learn… good. “We need to focus on the next camp. Sister Kaufman?”
Kaufman stepped forward and pointed to another camp outlined on the paper map. “This is the largest camp the Monrovians are running. It’s…”
