The Terran Alliance (Terran Menace Book 2), page 1
The Terran Alliance
Terran Menace, Book 2
J.R. Robertson
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 by J.R. Robertson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design and illustration by Jeff Brown Graphics
ISBN: 978-1-7359259-2-9 (ebook)
Contents
Prologue
1. First Impressions
2. Uneasy Meeting
3. Preparing for War
4. Pandora's Box
5. New Tech
6. Hostile Takeover
7. Proper Introductions
8. Unreasonable Demands
9. Better than Hollywood
10. Welcome to the Jungle
11. One Less Warlord
12. Code X-Ray
13. Reassigned
14. Taking Action
15. Goat Rope
16. Conspiracy
17. Indomitable
18. A Fateful Decision
19. Fashionably Early
20. Party Crashing
21. Cowboys from Hell
22. Knife Fight
23. Long Time, No See
24. Field Trip
25. Going Rogue
26. Ancient Traditions to the Rescue
27. Na'al's Gambit
28. The Agent's Playground
29. Getting the Band Back Together
30. Hunting the Boogeyman
31. 7 Arrives
32. Force Multiplier
33. Checkmate
34. Evac
35. Sacrifice
36. Tess
37. Kravczyk
38. The Sins of the Father
39. Regime Change
40. Hope
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Prologue
“The palace has fallen! The Primarch is dead!”
Saryf’s eyes went wide as the words repeated over the open defense channel. He turned to look at Zel, his friend and the last remaining member of his special tactics team. The man’s face was horror-stricken. Through the dried blood and grime covering Zel’s face, Saryf could see that his normally deep-purple complexion had gone pale.
“So that’s it, then,” Zel said, voice flat. “The empire is lost. Our new friends were too late to save us.”
Saryf looked at the heavy plasma rifle in his hands, a gift from their new allies in the Imperium to the Tal’grathi Empire—“military aid,” they’d called it. Plasma rifles, automated air-defense cannons, strategic defense satellites—all given freely to his people by the Imperium just a few weeks ago. They thought they’d had more time to prepare for the Ishigan invasion. But they were wrong.
The Imperium promised to send a fleet and thousands of troops to reinforce the beleaguered Tal’grathi capital, but they hadn’t yet arrived. All they had were these weapons and the small contingent of military advisors the Imperium had sent to instruct Saryf’s people in their use. If only they’d had more time, perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this.
A fresh volley of Ishigan kinetic rounds tore into the hastily constructed barricade the two commandos were taking cover behind. Each impact from the hyper-dense penetrators shook the structure. None breached the fortification, but it was only a matter of time. Zel popped around the corner and loosed a few blasts from his plasma rifle in return, and Saryf could just make out an answering scream from one of the advancing Ishigan soldiers. Overhead, the air crackled with power as the air-defense batteries engaged a fresh wave of targets, their multi-emitter short-cycle lasers turning enemy aircraft and ordnance into nothing more than burning debris in seconds.
“Saryf! Get back in the fight!” Zel shouted, nimbly ejecting the spent power core from his rifle and inserting a new one. “We still have a chance to save some of our people—our families—but you must fight!”
The mention of his family brought Saryf back to the present. His eyes briefly darted to the line of heavy transports in the distance. Vast waves of Tal’grathi civilians were lined up to board the last flight of evacuation ships. Somewhere in that mass of people, his wife and daughter waited their turn. Saryf’s grip tightened on his weapon. He would not survive this day, but he could at least fight to ensure his family did.
He checked the tactical plot on his forearm computer, then looked at Zel. “We cannot hold here. Red Squad is down, and our right flank is exposed. We need to fall back to the next defensive line and regroup with what’s left of the local defense force.”
Zel nodded. “You go first. I’ll provide cover.”
Saryf got into a low crouch and checked the status of his rifle one last time. All around him, blast craters littered the landscape, and the shattered remains of security fencing and prefabricated buildings served to mark the grave of his civilization. Little of the emergency evacuation site remained intact after hours of intense fighting. Only the wide-open airfield and the transports were untouched by enemy weapons—a testament to the awesome power of the Imperium’s autonomous air-defense batteries. It was precisely because of those batteries the Ishigan forces were now attempting a ground assault.
“Go!” Zel shouted, popping out of cover to engage the advancing enemy.
Saryf bolted into the open, sprinting for the next line of defensive barriers. He’d performed this maneuver four other times already, but this would be the last. There were no more defensive lines remaining. After this, they would need to continuously collapse back toward the transports, across open ground, buying each additional second with their lives.
Several penetrators snapped past him through the air, but he didn’t look back. His muscles burned from toxins that had built up thanks to the continuous punishment he’d put them through over the last few days—days during which the enemy had inexorably squeezed the last gasp of Tal’grathi resistance into an area barely a dozen square kilometers in size. The next defensive position approached rapidly, and he put his head down, urging his legs to propel him faster. Just a few more steps.
Saryf dove into cover behind the barricade and rolled into a kneeling position. His chest heaved, his lungs struggling to supply him with enough oxygen to replenish his used-up muscles. His rifle came up, and he rose to take a supported firing position behind the barrier. Saryf’s eyes met Zel’s across the distance, then shifted to the Ishigan soldiers now nearly abreast of Zel’s position. A plasma bolt leaped from his rifle, streaking through the air toward the enemy—the signal for Zel to run.
In the distance, figures snaked between piles of debris and abandoned Tal’grathi positions. Saryf sent a blistering stream of plasma toward them, doing his best to cover Zel’s retreat. One Ishigan soldier took a bolt directly to the chest, and the superheated plasma caused his torso to explode like a popped balloon. Another was hit in the leg, leaving behind nothing but a burning stump.
Saryf didn’t stop, continuing to send a stream of well-aimed bolts at the enemy. Penetrators tore through the air around him. Molten spall peppered his face and arms with every round that slammed into the barrier next to him, but he kept up his covering fire. Zel had nearly reached him when a voice crackled through his comms.
“All forces, be advised a platoon of Ishigan armor has breached the inner defensive line. They’re going after the air-defense batteries!”
Saryf’s power core ran dry just as Zel tumbled in behind the barricade. Saryf pulled back from his firing position and huddled next to his gasping friend, ejecting the spent core from his rifle and searching the pouches on his combat harness for another.
“Did you hear the call about the Ishigan armor pressing toward the batteries?” Zel said.
Saryf slammed his last power core into his rifle. “I did, but we don’t have the firepower to take on those damned mech suits. These plasma rifles are effective, but we’re talking about a whole platoon.”
“We have to try, Saryf. If those batteries are taken out, the transports won’t last two minutes.”
Saryf exchanged a long look with his friend. Zel was right, but what was the point? The Primarch was dead, their world was in flames, and they were but one last gasp of resistance desperately trying to escape an inevitable end. The faces of his wife and daughter flashed through his mind, and his eyes tracked toward the transports in the distance. He checked his mission computer, seeing the first of the transports wouldn’t be able to launch for at least another ten minutes. Could they hold the Ishigan armor off that long? How many defenders were even left? It didn’t matter—they had to try.
“How many power cores do you have left?” Saryf asked. “I’m on my last.”
“Three. Take one.” Zel pulled out a core and handed it to Saryf.
Saryf nodded his thanks and stowed the core in one of the empty pouches on his harness. “Alright, Zel. Let’s go. Battery Four is the closest—”
In the distance, a massive explosion sent a small mushroom cloud roiling into the sky. Then another, and another. All around them, the air-defense batteries were exploding. Saryf’s heart sank. How had the Ishigan armor moved so quickly? Without those batteries
, the transports were nothing more than fat targets sitting out in the open. Even as the thought made its way through his mind, the high-pitched scream of Ishigan fighter-bombers reached his ears.
Saryf turned to Zel, who nodded. “Let’s go!”
They needed to get the civilians away from the transports before the enemy began their strafing runs. The two men broke from cover and sprinted toward the mass of people several hundred meters distant, Saryf struggling to keep up with Zel, who was by far the fastest member of their unit.
Something streaked over Saryf’s head, and the air exploded. Zel disintegrated, coming apart like an overripe melon as the missile struck the ground directly at his feet. Saryf was thrown backward by the shock front, saved only by his lack of speed. His chest burned, the superheated air searing his lungs. He landed in a crumpled heap, too stunned to do anything but focus on the pain.
He gasped and rolled onto his side, trying to get up. He had to get up. His family was somewhere just ahead. He needed to get to them, if not to save them, then to at least be with them as death came to claim them.
A pair of Ishigan aircraft thundered overhead. Missiles streaked toward the transports. Time slowed to an agonizing crawl.
Orange flame erupted from the missiles’ tails in slow motion, driving them toward their target at several times the speed of sound. Saryf’s eyes followed them as they broke from their narrow formation and arced toward their individual targets. The first transport in line exploded, and a heartbeat later, the onboard fuel detonated. The massive lines of people were mowed down by the cascading blasts, hurled dozens of meters in the air, or simply swallowed up by the ravenous flames. It was all over in seconds.
Saryf cried out in agony as he forced himself painfully to his feet. By some miracle, his plasma rifle lay nearby. He picked it up and staggered toward the shattered, burning hulks of the transports. Ishigan bullets buzzed around him like a swarm of angry bees, but he ignored them. His feet moved him forward, one agonizing step at a time.
He looked around, searching for other defenders, but all he saw was lifeless devastation. Soon, he reached the first of the bodies, an elderly man missing both legs below the knees. As Saryf moved onward, the dead and dying became more numerous until each step needed to be taken with care so he did not step on one of the fallen.
He searched for what felt like an eternity. His eyes roved over the smoking sea of death, small fires burning all around him. His family was to board the second transport in line, and he made his way slowly in that direction, ignoring the pain of his own wounds. The distant sounds of battle surrounded him, but they were muted to his ears.
Then he saw them. His wife was huddled behind an overturned vehicle, clutching their daughter to her breast. Neither of them moved. The tattered end of the blue scarf she’d put on after their last kiss goodbye fluttered in the breeze like some obscene marker, beckoning him.
Saryf collapsed to his knees next to them. Leika’s hair had been singed away, but her face was still recognizable. Little Telfa’s was not.
Saryf wrapped his girls up in his arms. He wanted to cry out, to release the crushing pain in his heart through an anguished wail, but his seared throat and lungs barely managed a strangled moan.
Heavy, metallic footfalls approached his position. The Ishigan powered-armor troopers. They were coming for his Leika, for Telfa. They were coming to desecrate their bodies, just like they always did to Tal’grathi civilians. Rage flared in Saryf’s chest. He spun and faced the enemy, plasma rifle coming up to his shoulder.
The two Ishigan armored troopers were searching through the dead, killing any wounded they found by simply stomping on their heads. They hadn’t noticed Saryf yet, and he crept to the corner of his makeshift cover and readied his rifle.
Saryf popped out into the open, and his plasma rifle barked. A blazing bolt of plasma tore into the flexible overlapping plates covering the nearest trooper’s neck, sublimating it and vaporizing the flesh underneath. The helmeted head toppled from its shoulders, and the body collapsed in a heap. The second armored trooper was fast, ducking Saryf’s first shot and bringing its own weapon to bear in one motion. Saryf screamed unintelligibly as his finger fanned the plasma rifle’s trigger, sending a dozen bolts slamming into the second trooper. The few wild shots the enemy managed to get off went wide before it, too, crashed to the ground in a smoking heap.
White-hot fire tore through Saryf’s shoulder. His rifle dropped to the ground as he cried out and clutched at the wound. A third armored trooper Saryf hadn’t noticed had hit him from fifty meters away. Blood oozed through the fingers of his gloves as he rolled back around the corner of the wrecked vehicle and shielded the bodies of his wife and daughter with his own. Dozens of kinetic rounds continued hammering into the other side of the vehicle. A few made it through, exiting just above Saryf’s huddled form.
His weapon was gone, but he still had one option left to ensure the Ishigan bastards wouldn’t be able to desecrate his girls’ bodies. He pulled his hand away from his shoulder and fumbled with one of the pouches on his harness. Fingers wet with blood slipped off the buckle several times as the heavy stomping of the armor came closer. He finally released the buckle and withdrew the grenade just as his vision began to narrow. Without pressure on his wound, the blood loss was sapping his strength quickly.
A fresh round of weapons fire raked the other side of the vehicle. More of the Ishigan kinetic guns chattered nearby, interspersed by the heavy bark of plasma weapons. A few defenders must have survived, but they wouldn’t last long.
The sounds of battle faded away, replaced by a brief silence before those heavy footfalls resumed their approach. Saryf placed his thumb over the arming spike on the grenade.
A huge, armored hand appeared around the corner of the vehicle, followed a moment later by a beast of an alien, well over two and a half meters in height. Saryf’s thumb applied pressure to the grenade, but he hesitated before the explosive activated. His blurred vision could just barely make out the markings on the alien’s armor. The strange characters were familiar for some reason, but they weren’t the blocky letters of the Ishigan script.
A deep voice rumbled out from the armor. “Saryf of the Tal’grathi?”
Why wasn’t the trooper killing him? The Ishigan did not take prisoners. What sort of game was this alien playing? Those symbols, though…
“Saryf, the battle is over. My Master sent a fleet to this world, and the Ishigan armada is burning in space above us even as I speak.”
“You’re an Imperium trooper?” Saryf said, his mind sluggish from the loss of blood. He didn’t have long now.
“Yes. I am a member of the Imperium commando unit that brought your people weapons. We were delayed in deploying here by an unexpectedly large Ishigan force at the palace. Sadly, we could not save the Primarch.”
Saryf looked at the Imperium commando with unfocused eyes. “I see. You’re too late to save me and my family as well, unfortunately.” Saryf’s strength failed him, and he slumped to the ground. “Please, allow me to die in peace with my girls.”
“If that is your wish,” the commando said. “However, my Master has an offer for you, one you may want to consider, as it would grant you the ability to exact revenge on your enemy.”
Saryf barked a wet, derisive laugh, then wiped the trickle of blood spilling from his lips with his sleeve. “Look at me, alien,” he croaked out. “My body is destroyed, and I’m dying. In a minute or two, I won’t be any use to you or your Master.”
“The Master does not require your body, Tal’grathi, only your mind. Accept the offer and become a weapon more powerful than any of your enemies could imagine. Join us, and you will oversee the destruction of the Ishigan menace. This is my Master’s promise to you.”
