Strange Company 2: Voodoo Warfare, page 42
As I understand it, the central hull is all Monarch blue. The main hull is brilliant white and dotted with glittering lights that come from the inside and seem to be small cities crawling along its tapering cylinder. All of it run, crewed, and lived in by the ship’s complement of beam gunners, transport officers, supply chiefs, and air attack squadron pilots both sub and orbital. I have no credibility in guessing the size of the crew complement, but if I had to, I’d put it at upwards of ten thousand. But I could be off by a hundred thousand. The mind fractures looking at the immense size of the ship that has come to kill us all, drifting into the skies above our war like some casual end of the world come to make good on its promise.
That’s not totally correct. The ship will kill some of us. The Ultras will kill the rest. That’s how it’ll go from here on out for what remains of this world’s last gasp of self-rule.
If the magnificence of the incredibly long central hull wasn’t just a universal wonder in and of itself… I mean seriously, how do they build these things? Mega-corporations can build city-sized orbital refineries or bulk cargo haulers, and of course small destroyers, cutters, liners, and the scouts and free traders. But nothing even approaches the incredible size of a Battle Spire.
If anything, its very existence makes the argument that the Monarchs are better than the rest of us. To build a ship of that size defies every known science. And yet… there it is. Moments from raining down a thousand different forms of death on our heads.
One of our wounded just died on the deck of the Drop Zero Six. Maybe two minutes from getting triaged by Chief Cutter’s medics. Now he’ll go to Preacher. I watch as Choker shuts the eyes of the dead man.
As I was saying, if the central hull wasn’t enough to make you remind yourself to close your jaw and stop gaping like some slack-jawed local yokel, then it’s the Ultra Battle Rings rotating independently about the hull that make you dizzy with fatal wonder.
I don’t want to look at the dead man on the deck or remember his name. Or ask myself if I got his story down in the logs. It’s all too much right now. So, I look at the fantastic death machine I’m being given the rare privilege of actually seeing during an invasion. As I’ve said, this is a sight reserved mostly for the deceased of other forgotten battles.
Death and wonder don’t mix.
On this Spire there are five. Five battle rings. Again, I’ve heard other Spires have more. But five is more than enough to assure us of our imminent destruction. The rings are not attached in any way to the main hull. And yet they encompass its diameter, rotating languidly like some magnetic levitation art installation inside a mem zillionaire’s private tower on one of the Bright Worlds.
These rings are where the Ultras are.
Even now as I watch, mechs, walkers, and actual airborne are being dropped all across the battlefield. Combat teams, strike divisions, enforcers, inquisition squads, death squads, special forces, armor, artillery, and drop commandos. Departing from the drop, jump, and combat cargo decks.
It’s raining death out there.
It’s beautiful to behold if you’re given to grim fascination and your mind just keeps whispering in the background, low enough so you can ignore it completely, that you’re all about to die. Then, yes, it really is fascinating to behold.
They come down like falling stars, the big mechs that will soon form the main assets of their attack and sweep during the First Pass. Walkers with GAU guns and missile packs. Big walkers with 140mm main guns and anti-personnel chain guns. Heavies with Maas Gausers and A-beams to sear right through structures and boil any defenders inside.”
That was the Battle Spire that had come and driven us off our last contract on Astralon, Crash, call it… whatever you want.
That was then.
Now…
Red Dragon, the last Battle Spire I saw, or anyone would ever see, suddenly detonated itself at the behest of the Monarchs. Homo superior playing their games, their last cards, throwing it all down now even when they’d finally lost. Red Dragon, just like that other fantastic Battle Spire I’d been both terrified and fascinated to see, it just went up in a nuclear fireball out over the deserts and jungles of the Monarchs’ second-to-last world.
The world they’d just lost to us on LZ Heartbreak.
My guess is they were trying to get close enough to the city to kill us all with the detonation. But they’d run out of time and some critical system had failed, making it impossible to reach the best possible execution of detonation point in order to have their last revenge on us. Who knows, maybe some onboard AI was fighting them to save the ship, despite their best efforts to spend it on little more than petty spite.
But everyone knows there’s no one pettier than a Monarch.
Maybe the missile frigates and gun corvettes, supporting the large capital ships swarming like hungry hunting dogs, had scored too many internals on critical motive systems and the mighty Red Dragon was about to go nose over into the planet’s surface, and the Monarchs’ last remaining AIs, the really devious ones that have probably cooked up this whole mess, maybe they estimated a larger kill ratio if they did an atmospheric det at that altitude and range.
We estimate this much dead of the population, masters, if we execute No Joy now. The window of fatality will present diminishing returns with each second that passes after that.
Monarch thinking. Cold inhuman AI supergenius-level planning. I don’t know which one is worse. And the horror show is they were working together for a long time before I ever even arrived on the scene.
If the detonation had occurred over the city… we’d all be dead.
Instead, it just went off like the biggest firecracker ever. Suddenly and all at once. The blast came from the powerful maneuvering engines. Maybe even the secret fold engine reactors contributed. A shock wave pulsed away in silence from the explosion of the hull, engines, everything… ripping the entire back end of Red Dragon to shreds in every direction in just seconds.
Then, faster than you could expect, and yes there was a flash that raced away across the atmosphere of this scarred world, but… it wasn’t blinding. Maybe at a closer range it might have been… but faster than you can imagine the entire central hull rippled forward from countless smaller internal explosions, sending hull plating, guns, missiles systems, and crew and everything else… burning off in every direction away from the small sun igniting in the upper atmosphere.
Clouds in the area, the yellow miasma of a jungle world like Marsantyium, just vaporized in an instant and were gone as though they’d never been there.
“Blast wave!” shouted Choker as we stopped to stare in awe at such a beautifully terrible sight.
We had one hundred yards to go to reach the Spider.
The Spider’s cargo door was closing even now. We had no comm. We’d had it. Then the detonation had fried everything.
“Doghouse, we’re coming in…”
“Copy that—” Static. Then nothing.
“That blast wave’s gonna hit us! Run!” shouted Choker.
And it was coming. We didn’t need a psychopath to tell us that. We were probably gonna die.
But we weren’t gonna give up. We pushed, struggled, and hauled our wounded for our lives, knowing we were leaving the dead out there in the burnt sands of a bad LZ.
By the time we made the rear cargo deck of the Spider, a howling wind came up with a roar and was being pushed through what remained of the city. Hurricane-force winds suddenly surged and dead bodies were flying through the air, carried off into the storm. Shotgunned buildings in the distance, those red marble temples and palatial halls of the petty gods, were coming apart as tremors shook the surface and savage winds pushed ahead of the blast wave, grabbing and tearing down what they could.
We heard the explosion, the savage CRAAAAAK of the starship that pieces and flaming sections of were already flying far off into the distant sky or raining down in smoky black and gray trails all over this world just like it had once dropped armies from the sky to assert dominance on behalf of the Monarchs. We heard the big explosion of the doomed ship, and everything went to eleven.
I have no idea what that means. It’s an old Earth colloquialism. Maybe we’d find out how it came about when we got there and dusted the last of the Monarchs.
The cargo doors of the Spider were coming down.
“We ain’t gonna make it!” shouted Choker.
“Less piehole, more leg, psycho!” shouted Punch in response.
“MOVE, REAPER! NOW!” shouted Ulysses and for a moment it was as though you were more afraid of him than the impending blast wave. “WE’RE GOING THROUGH THAT CARGO DOOR WHETHER IT’S OPEN OR CLOSED!”
A black sandstorm with swirling red flecks, and yes, the bodies of dead Ultras, came whirlwinding all around all at once, trying to suck us backward as we struggled up the rear deck ramp toward the closing doors. You could hear nothing, but the first sergeant was there shouting and waving at someone to hold the door. The upper blast doors were almost down.
A dead Ultra Marine came tumbling past us and Ulysses kicked him out of the way with a savage jerk and started hauling everyone under the crack, grabbing them and flinging them inside as the winds fought to tear us off back into the storm and the ruin.
I could see Biggs working the doors in there.
Other Strange were there, but not many.
Then we were in, Ulysses and then me because I would have it no other way even though he is a better soldier than I will ever hope to be.
He’s a warrior. Like something from an age of heroes and myths that were fantasies of epic deeds done by the best of us.
I’m just trying to get everyone back to the dustoff.
“That everyone?” someone asked in the thin gloom beyond the massive cargo doors lowering us into darkness.
But who could know? The first sergeant was in and among everyone as the hot wind smelling of dead bodies and dead starships raced onto the seemingly empty deck. None of the mechs had made it back. Strange was missing a platoon, minimum.
We had won.
But it didn’t look like it at all.
I got together the best ACE report I could develop. It was incomplete and I knew it and I should have been ashamed. I knew which dead I’d left out there in the sand and the wind… and the destruction that was coming. They deserved better than that. But it was the best I could do.
The doors were closing.
M.O.M. who didn’t sound like herself was counting down the blast wave impact.
“Blast wave arrival… forty-three seconds to impact. Destruction… imminent. Stand by and secure all items.”
No dear. No have a nice day.
I didn’t know which dead I’d left out there.
Then someone shouted, “Here they come!”
I turned and saw Hauser and some of Third, struggling through the blasting sand and wind out there. We could see nothing beyond them. And then… out of the hellscape of nothingness and impending oblivion beyond Hauser and what remained of Third… the captain. With Chief Cook leaning against him. Obviously badly wounded.
The captain’s brown leather trench coat flapping madly in the wind as the two of them made it through the narrow window, and then Biggs lowered the ship’s massive cargo doors.
Seconds later M.O.M. began the ten-second countdown after noting, “All available and reserve power to shields…”
Ten…
Nine…
Eight… Brace for impact.
“Hang—” someone was about to say but never finished on.
Chapter Fifty
On.
Hang on.
Life is good. But there are times, and sometimes the times are many for a very long time when it’s like being in the darkness, pressed and close, feeling like death is coming for you, and then getting hit by the apocalyptic blast wave of an exploding starship. I have found Hang on works for almost every occasion when everything, all of it, seems like too much.
In the dark, with those smokes and coffee I have often talked about… when the call comes that someone in Reaper has screwed up bad and local law enforcement wants answers, or some fire needs to be put out between the platoons, or the first sergeant’s on a tear about something we should have cared more about, or there’s an incoming distress call from a super-hauler with xenos on board and it’s time to get it on… sometimes, in those last moments as I inhale the last smoke, drink the coffee, pat the paperback I’m always working on, as though I’m telling my friends in the book I’ll be back and for them not to worry, in those times I have often heard myself mumble, Hang on.
Or as some wise person once said… Sometimes you pray, even when you don’t believe.
“Hang on,” said M.O.M. in her matronly voice. It sounded tired, and uncertain. Like her speech algos were damaged. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for a computer.
I know… I need to get a life.
Then the blast wave from the destruction of the Red Dragon hit us like the largest baseball bat ever cranked up to full and swinging deep for the cheap seats in the game of the year.
The blast connected and it was a home run.
If felt like our old destroyer was going to go right over on her side… and then where would we be?
The cargo deck fell into darkness and some of us screamed. Others shouted. Yes, there was crying. Probably Choker. And of course… I’m sure there were prayers.
I hung on.
Some got hit by flying gear, others went flying because they hadn’t grabbed straps or bulkheads. Biggs keeps everything stowed pretty tight on the ship. It could have been worse. Still, stuff broke loose and one of the snipers ended up with a crushed leg for his troubles.
We were in total darkness for three hours before emergency lighting from damage control finally flickered online with little fanfare.
It just did.
We looked like the cursed dead as we stared at each other and wondered how bad it was.
For hours it had sounded bad as the ship got rocked and buried beneath the fury of the Red Dragon’s last breath.
We’d decided, or the first sergeant decided actually, for “everyone just to stay put for now. Safer that way. NCOs, get a count and give me a shout-out if you can.”
The winds howled and beat at the ship like no storm I’ve ever been in for those three hours. M.O.M. was damaged. XO was missing and presumed dead in one of the artillery strikes that nailed the ship on the LZ.
We sat in the dark and listened to the multi-ton starship rock back and forth in the blast waves created by the destruction of the largest ship in existence. Massive bulkheads and the central beam of the ship groaning ominously.
We waited for the smell of smoke and wondered if we’d burn alive.
We tried to think of what we’d need to do once the sand stopped flying, stopped beating and slashing and whispering against the side of the hull.
When damage control came online later, M.O.M. came back thirty minutes after that.
“Current status, ship…” she said as though nothing was wrong, “… damaged. Extensively. Starflight unavailable at this time. Decks…”
Then she listed a lot of damage.
It was bad.
Real bad.
It sounded bad.
We began to realize, sitting there in the darkness, having shucked our gear but held on to our weapons, that there was a distinct possibility we were now stranded on this world.
The litany of damage control items sounded beyond our martial abilities, and definitely beyond our funds, to repair.
In the darkness Punch, eating a protein bar, whispered through the chewed remains of it, “Hey, we won, Big Sarge. Right? We won out there. Ultras got punched in the face and they didn’t get up. That’s how it’s goin’ down for the record, right?”
I don’t know.
Supposedly.
Three days later we were able to crawl out of the ship. One half of the Spider was buried in the native red sand of that world.
We’d gone carefully through the main reactor, up through the engineering decks, and come out on top of the sand-covered hull.
It was a blue day. Clear as far as the eye could see. But there were great fires over the jungles off to the east. Where the Red Dragon, or what was left of it, had probably gone down. A gentle wind was keeping the smoke away from the city, sending it off in other directions out over the red stone world covered in emerald jungles.
Some of the city was left out there. But not much.
But much of it had been blasted away by what looked like the most devastating artillery strike ever.
Large portions of it were buried under that sand. So were the dead. Ours and theirs.
As I have said, one half of the Spider was buried. The other half was not, and we could enter and exit from the lower cargo doors there. The side facing the blast had been covered in sand.
“It almost looks like…” said Choker dreamily as he stared out over the vast sand sea that seemed to have washed almost everything away besides the tallest skeletons of the temples and palaces of the Monarchs. He’d been assigned to go on the recon through our own ship as the acting medic. “It’s like it never happened,” Choker said dreamily.
Cutter was still treating the wounded down in the lower med bays. Power was restored to much of the ship.
