WarGate Books

An Imprint of Galaxy’s Edge Press

PO Box 534

Puyallup, Washington 98371

Text copyright © 2023 by Peter Nealen

Production copyright © 2024 by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

All rights reserved.

www.wargatebooks.com

Contents

1. CHAPTER 1

2. CHAPTER 2

3. CHAPTER 3

4. CHAPTER 4

5. CHAPTER 5

6. CHAPTER 6

7. CHAPTER 7

8. CHAPTER 8

9. CHAPTER 9

10. CHAPTER 10

11. CHAPTER 11

12. CHAPTER 12

13. CHAPTER 13

14. CHAPTER 14

15. CHAPTER 15

16. CHAPTER 16

17. CHAPTER 17

18. CHAPTER 18

19. CHAPTER 19

20. CHAPTER 20

21. CHAPTER 21

22. CHAPTER 22

23. CHAPTER 23

24. CHAPTER 24

25. CHAPTER 25

26. CHAPTER 26

27. CHAPTER 27

28. CHAPTER 28

29. CHAPTER 29

30. CHAPTER 30

31. CHAPTER 31

32. CHAPTER 32

33. CHAPTER 33

34. CHAPTER 34

35. CHAPTER 35

36. CHAPTER 36

37. CHAPTER 37

38. CHAPTER 38

39. CHAPTER 39

40. CHAPTER 40

41. CHAPTER 41

42. CHAPTER 42

43. CHAPTER 43

44. CHAPTER 44

45. CHAPTER 45

46. CHAPTER 46

47. EPILOGUE

48. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

49. PACIFICATION

CHAPTER 1

Something must have caught Private Riddle’s eye from where he stood in the turret of the lead combat crawler. Either that, or Private Samson was extraordinarily observant, given how low to the ground he was in the driver’s compartment.

The eight-wheeled vehicle slowed, dust billowing out from beneath its stiffened weave tires, and Riddle pivoted the combat laser toward the rise just off to the north. Some of the gray-green spatulate local growth clung to the rocky promontory, but like most of this stretch of empty country outside of Berinchi Konu, the hill was mostly barren. Still, Lieutenant Ulric Bannon had seen enough over the last two hundred days on Zhogalgan to know that the otuchans didn’t need a lot of vegetation to hide. The ground might look relatively flat, at least on this side of the Keptirilgin Mountains, but looks were deceiving.

The saurian bastards were very good at flattening themselves into the smallest cracks and crevices in the rocks and the dusty ground, waiting motionless for hours or days until their quarry walked into their sights.

Bannon was seated in the right-hand seat of his own crawler, two vehicles back from the lead, though the column was staggered so that he could see the movement of the point vehicle clearly through the armored vision slots in the front glacis. He touched the transmit control on his gauntlet. “Vehicle One. Status.”

Before Sergeant Munoz, in the vehicle commander’s seat of the lead, could answer, a rocket slammed out from the hill and struck the front glacis. The driver had already started to back up, fortunately. Otherwise, it would have hit the hull square and probably blown the vehicle to bits.

“Spread out, skirmish line.” Bannon was already prying himself out of his seat. If the phalanx had been in hardsuits, it would have been much harder to get out of the armored crawler. Corvanites didn’t like to sacrifice mobility for protection if they could help it, though. “All riflemen on the ground. Gunners provide covering fire. First Squad, set up a base of fire. Second and Third, on me. We’ll sweep out to the flank.” He switched channels with the tap of a key. “Operations Seven-Three, this is One Zero Two Three. Otuchan ambush at sector seven-three-five-eight. Requesting immediate support.”

He didn’t need to push the rest of the men out of the back of the infantry fighting vehicle. They’d drilled this hundreds of times, even before coming to Zhogalgan and facing more than a few otuchan ambushes out on the desolate badlands that surrounded the human settlements.

The Corvanite warriors spilled off the ramp, sprinting to either side of the vehicle before throwing themselves prone on the dusty ground, searching for targets. Bannon stayed on his feet for the moment, bracing his CR-196 rifle against the crawler’s hull, scanning the hill over the sights. The lead vehicle had backed up fast, nearly reaching his own Chariot 72. That had, apparently, taken them out of the rocket launcher’s kill zone, and now they were starting to see movement on the hillside.

Bannon touched the switch that increased the sights’ magnification and picked out one of the otuchans crawling underneath one of those spatulate bushes. The plants didn’t seem to have discrete leaves; their branches just flattened out into the closest analog to them. They didn’t provide enough concealment for the broad, bowlegged reptilian alien, either.

His finger tightened on the trigger, and the six-millimeter rifle bucked against his shoulder with a harsh crack. The otuchan jerked, but instead of retreating or taking cover, it pivoted its boxy rifle toward the Corvanite vehicles and fired. The muzzle blast kicked up dust in front of the otuchan fighter, and a heavy slug slammed into the armored flank of the Chariot 72, but then Bannon leaned into his own weapon and shot the otuchan four more times, as fast as he could reset the trigger.

Across the open ground, gunfire thundered and combat lasers hissed, that hiss turning into a roaring crackle as the directed energy blasted scorched trenches in the dirt and turned what little moisture was in the ground to steam. The answering fire was no less intense, though the otuchans never seemed to attempt to gain fire superiority. They hoarded every round, made every shot count as best they could. One of Third Squad took a bullet through the helmet as he sprinted for cover in a fold of the ground off the flank, near the foot of the hill, shattering his visor and blowing a spray of red out through the back of his neck. He tumbled limply to the dust even as the gunner in the nearest crawler turned his laser on the hill and set two more of the bushes on fire as he raked the otuchans’ position with millions of joules of concentrated energy.

Bannon was moving then, dashing toward a shallow draw that came down from the top of the hill, eroded by the wind and the occasional rains that swept the plateau at the onset of fall and spring. Another bullet snapped past his head as he moved, entirely too close for his comfort. The otuchans were good marksmen.

He refused to be cowed by the nearness of the shot, no matter how exposed he was for those few seconds as he crossed the open ground toward the ditch. He was a Corvanite, and the leader of a phalanx. Death comes. Let us go and meet it.

Chased by three more shots, he made it to the ditch, though he was pretty sure that he’d felt one tug at the top of his helmet as he’d run. The otuchans were not only good shots, they could get on target faster than most humans.

Throwing himself into cover, he found Sergeant Killian and most of Second Squad already forming into a wedge to push up the draw toward the otuchan positions. Bannon took a moment to assess the battlefield even as another otuchan bullet spat fragments off a rock at the lip of the draw.

First Squad was in cover behind the rough crescent that the vehicles had formed, the turret lasers continuing to rake the hillside with concentrated, high-intensity light, the pulses leaving traces of glowing superheated air behind them as they exploded rocks, plants, and reptilian flesh alike.

Sergeant Munoz was on his feet, identifiable by his short stature and massive, pugnacious build. Still behind the lead combat crawler, he was directing Private Usten, his squad’s autogunner, to shift fire when his torso exploded with a flash and a crack.

Bannon blinked. That had been a laser strike. Since when did the otuchans have combat lasers?

In the middle of a firefight was not the time or the place to ponder the mystery. He had a fight to win.

“Corporal Summ! You have First Squad! Hold your position, get cover, and bring as much fire on that hilltop as you can!” He turned to where Sergeant Hern was bringing Third up alongside Second. “Sergeant Hern! Second and Third Squads, skirmishers right!”

The two squads of Corvanite warriors spread out, staggering their positions on the hillside, as they started to move up toward the aliens’ positions.

They had to move fast, and Bannon was soon out front, his rifle in his hands, his legs pumping as he drove himself up the hill. The otuchans were experts at using the terrain to their advantage, as much as they were utterly savage in close combat. They were maneuvering even under fire, Bannon had no doubt about it.

Despite their speed, the Corvanites didn’t simply rush the top of the hill. They were warriors, not fools. Each man dashed from cover to cover, rushing a few yards before throwing himself down into a depression in the ground or behind a rock. The otuchans’ weapons were crude but accurate, and they could kill a man just as dead as any of the more advanced means of destruction in the galaxy.

As he neared the top, having drawn almost a full bound ahead of Second Squad, even while Private Beck tried hard to catch up—that was always a challenge in Lieutenant Bannon’s phalanx, one that most of the junior warriors eagerly took up—Bannon slowed, going down into more of a crouch as he worked his way up the remnant of the draw. They’d closed the distance, but now it became a much more dangerous game.

Movement stirred the bush that clung tenaciously to the rocky crest, and he snapped his CR-196 toward it, registering the flattened, green-gray scaled skull and the wide-set beady eyes behind a sleek, modern-looking rifle just before the muzzle spat flame.

Bannon threw himself flat before he even completely consciously registered what he was looking at. The bullet passed by his head so close that he actually felt it go by, the snap almost painful in its proximity despite his helmet’s built-in hearing protection. He hit hard, bruising his shoulder on a rock as he landed, and quickly rolled to his side, blasting three shots at the prone otuchan as fast as he could, just to try to get the alien’s head down.

Not that the otuchans had shown themselves particularly susceptible to suppressive fire over the last couple hundred days the Corvanites had been “peacekeeping” on Zhogalgan. They could be nearly as insensible to the threat of death as the Corvanites themselves.

He must have hit something, because his enhanced hearing picked up a rattling hiss of pain. He surged to his feet again, throwing himself forward, his rifle already tracking toward the otuchan’s hiding place. He raked the otuchan with half a dozen shots as the alien scrabbled backward, already leaving a streak of dark fluid on the rocks as it retreated.

More of the Corvanite assaulters were reaching the crest of the hill, and more gunfire stuttered along the ridgeline. Beck took a round through the throat and fell, but Killian avenged him, blowing out the otuchan’s eye where it had started to move from its cover. Nguyen moved up with Second Squad’s autogun, sweeping the hilltop with six-millimeter fire as he advanced, leaning into the gun, the muzzle spitting flame that seemed brighter than normal in the wan light of Zhogalgan’s distant sun.

Bannon pressed forward, his weapon held high and ready, searching for targets. He dashed to the finger of rock where the otuchan he’d shot was shuddering out the last of its life, and dropped to a knee next to the saurian body after kicking its lightweight rifle away from a grasping claw.

Below, he could see more of the otuchans’ ambush position. They’d dug in ahead of time, and one of their angular, five-wheeled crawlers was parked in another draw, shielded from the Corvanite vehicles by a shoulder of the rocky hill. Two more of their boxy rocket launchers were set in along that same shoulder, partially dug in, protruding above the rocks just enough to have a shot at the column as it went by. If the gunner of the lead Chariot hadn’t spotted something, they might have lost their first two vehicles in the opening moments of the ambush.

Bannon dumped the rest of his magazine at the nearest rocket launcher. The otuchan behind it, a smaller reptilian than the one now lying still and dead within an arm’s length of him, was trying to pivot the launcher toward the top of the hill, realizing that they were being overrun. Bannon’s first shots hit the launcher itself, but his next shots tracked toward the otuchan’s flat skull behind it, one of them striking home just before Hunt’s first thirty-seven-millimeter grenade slammed into the rock just above the otuchan’s head. The projectile detonated with a flash, a puff of black smoke, and a heavy thud that was drowned out a moment later as the launcher’s magazine blew off, four warheads ripping the launcher and three nearby otuchans to pieces with a rippling, overlapping fireball.

The resulting black smoke and billowing dust momentarily obscured the second launcher—along with half the hillside—but the otuchans didn’t give Bannon or his men the opening that he was looking for. The crawler at the base of the hill pivoted its own boxy launcher and ripple-fired all nine rockets at the hilltop.

Bannon felt himself violently yanked to the ground behind the rock a moment before the hilltop and everything else seemed to disappear in a thunderous crash of sound, savage shock waves slamming him against the rocks as grit and bigger fragments swept over them, momentarily blacking out the sun.

Even with the helmet’s ear protection, Bannon found that he couldn’t hear. His head ached from the shock, and he groggily forced himself to his feet. He was pretty sure he’d blacked out.

Looking down, he saw that it was Sergeant Killian who had forced him down behind the rock. For a moment, he thought his Second Squad leader was dead, but then Killian rolled over onto his back with a groan, spitting gray dust as he moved.

Dragging himself back to the rock, Bannon retrieved his rifle. He was starting to be able to hear again. Gunfire still crackled and thundered through the smoke and the dust. The fight wasn’t over.

Another round smacked chips of rock into his face. The otuchans weren’t being quite as precise with their fire as they usually were.

Bannon reached up and touched the control for his helmet’s enhanced vision. The quad receptors above his visor turned on, and soon a highlighted version of the view before him was projected onto the inside of his visor. It still couldn’t make out that much, thanks to all the dust, but he could see several dead otuchans as well as a couple more of his Corvanites down, one of them in multiple pieces, his blood spilling out onto the dusty ground. The otuchans that were still alive were falling back toward the crawler.

Bannon knew he didn’t have to worry about more rocket fire from the crawler just yet, so he got up and started forward, already drawing a bead on the nearest otuchan. The aliens were falling back in good order, moving from cover to cover, searching for targets from behind their rifles as they retreated toward the canyons and badlands beyond. The hilltop where the Corvanites were positioned was so open—any cover or concealment that might once have been there had been swept away by the rocket barrage—that the smoke and the dust were the only advantages Third Phalanx had.

He still pushed on, dashing across the open hillside before throwing himself flat a few yards on and looking for more targets. He wasn’t going to let any more of these savages get away than he could help. He’d seen what they’d done across a dozen human settlements over the last half a year. Besides, they’d killed his men.

Three shots dropped another otuchan that had paused without quite enough cover to search the cloud for targets. The reptilian let its rifle fall as it grabbed for its throat, then staggered and fell onto its snout.

A growing, snarling howl reached Bannon’s ears, followed by a comms transmission a moment later. “One Zero Two Three, this is Goshawk Six. Call targets.”

Bannon’s voice was a harsh rasp as he dropped into a warhead crater and keyed his comms. “Primary target: single five-wheel crawler at the western base of the hill, approximately seven hundred yards from hilltop. Be advised, I do not currently have line of sight.”

“Good copy, Three.” Unlike a drop shuttle pilot, the gunship pilot’s voice was tight with anticipation. The Griffon pilots were warriors, and they were as eager to join a fight as the hardest ground-pounder.

Two of the chisel-nosed attack craft roared past overhead, low enough that their ducted fans blew the pall of dust and smoke into tattered whorls, exposing the top of the hill and the ragged line of Corvanite warriors still recovering from the impacts of the rockets. The smoke and dust rolled down toward the otuchans, shielding the Corvanites for a few more moments, then became a moot point as the two Griffon 80 gunships opened fire.

The lead ship strafed the crawler first, leading with the nose-mounted laser and the twin twenty-six-millimeter chain guns. Collimated light and heavy metal tore into the rough-looking vehicle, turning it into the pile of scrap it already resembled with only a couple of seconds of fiery, kinetic violence.

Then the lead Griffon was pulling away, banking to the south, while the follow gunship swooped in like the bird of prey it was named for. It slowed at the last moment, catching its momentum with its roaring fans and sliding to bring its weapons to bear along a line parallel with the Corvanite ground-pounders’ ragged line.

With a roaring crackle, the second ship raked the side of the hill just above where the wreckage of the crawler burned, turning half a dozen more otuchan raiders to bloody shreds and stinking mist in an eyeblink, the laser turning the ground molten while the heavy twenty-six-millimeter slugs blew deep pits in dirt and rock alike, sending black showers of debris skyward with every impact. The thunder was nearly as deafening as the rocket impacts had been.

Engines rumbled, and rock and scree crunched under synthetic weave tires as the combat crawlers came around the side of the hill, lasers picking off a few more retreating otuchans with harsh hiss-snaps.

Bannon stood, though he kept his CR-196 ready. He’d seen the otuchans hide in place under fire before. This looked like a clean sweep, though.

When he glanced below, he saw that there were more crawlers than just his phalanx’s. It looked like the rest of the 102nd Company had arrived.

Captain Haarot would want a report. It would have to wait until the ambush site was secure.

“Skirmishers right. On me.” Keeping his rifle in his shoulder, he started down the hill, tracking his muzzle toward any piece of cover that might conceal one of their adversaries. Spreading out, still somewhat ragged due to the losses taken and the rough terrain, the rest of Third Phalanx followed.

***

Captain Haarot still had his helmet on. His visor hid his eyes, but the harsh set of his mouth, perpetually twisted into a sneer by the scar that slashed across his cheek, was unchanging. “Report, Lieutenant.” He didn’t turn toward Bannon as he continued to observe the final cleanup of the battlefield.

Bannon, his voice still hoarse, his fatigues and gear—and his face—still covered with a fine layer of gray dust, gave a concise account of the ambush and its response. When he mentioned the lasers, Haarot turned toward him, and while the captain’s visor was still darkened and nearly opaque from the outside, Bannon could feel the man’s eyes on him.

“The otuchans have not utilized lasers before this.”

“No, sir, they have not.” Bannon hefted the lightweight but boxy rifle that he’d taken from the claws of one of the dead otuchans on the hilltop. “They haven’t been using these, either.”

Haarot took the weapon and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t recognize the make.”

“I don’t either, sir. But it’s a human design, using quite a lot of synthetic, modified for otuchan claws.” Bannon had examined it carefully before bringing it down for the captain’s inspection. Captain Haarot considered guesswork and speculation to be a waste of his time. “The stampings identify the company as Wathelet. I’ve never heard of them. No otuchan made that weapon, though.”

Haarot shook his head in agreement. The otuchans, like most of their kind off their homeworlds, had been dropped on Zhogalgan with only the most basic tools and supplies. Their tech was all built from the ground up, and it looked like it. The otuchan rifles they’d captured prior to now had been basic, stamped-metal blowback designs, with all the aesthetics of a chunk of structural steel. This was different. Add in the combat lasers…

The captain handed the rifle back. “Collect all the examples you can. We’re not supplying them, and the local human colonists, even if they could get their hands on weapons like these, wouldn’t either. Bring them to your objective. Our ‘associates’ are on their way as we speak, and may have already reached the site of the incident.”

“You want me to confront them with this?” Bannon doubted that would go well. There were nearly two corps of Zolarian troops on Zhogalgan. They and the Corvanites were both ostensibly there to keep the fragile—some would say nonexistent—peace between the Kazakh human colonists and the otuchans. But the discovery of these weapons brought the Zolarians’ true intent into question. After all, they hadn’t been shy about stomping on the humans who had taken the fight to the otuchans so far, and it had been no secret that they’d resented the Corvanite deployment ever since planetfall.

“For whatever good it will do, yes.” Haarot had returned his gaze to the final sweep of the battlefield. “We’re here to press them, Lieutenant, so press them we will. They have no business on this planet, and we must confront them with that fact at every turn.” He spared one more glance at Bannon. “Load your wounded into the casevac crawler. We’ll take the dead back with us. Do you have enough men remaining to complete your mission?”

Bannon looked back over his shoulder, calculating in his head. Of his forty-four-man phalanx, he’d lost five men killed outright. Half a squad, though the losses were distributed mostly between Second and Third. And though he had plenty of injured, most of those were walking wounded who wouldn’t be left behind for anything, regardless of the captain’s orders.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The captain was deeply respected by his men, with a history of brutal battles that read like some entire units’ honor roll. Yet he was also quietly resented, in no small part because he expected every man under his command to be every bit as driven, remorseless, and emotionlessly calculating as he was. “The Relentless just arrived in orbit,” he continued. “You’ll get combat replacements within a few days. Proceed in the meantime. Death comes, Lieutenant.”

“Let us go and meet it.” Bannon wouldn’t salute. They were in the field. Corvanites didn’t salute except under very strict circumstances.

Haarot nodded his acknowledgment, and Bannon turned on his heel, stalking back toward his crawler with the captured rifle in his fist.

They still had a long way to go.

CHAPTER 2

First Sergeant Cul Draven’s lip curled in disgust as they got closer to the village of Az Ku. The smoke was starting to dissipate in the thin breeze coming out of the west, but there was still enough to tell what had happened there. Or from the sounds of things, as the outriders began to report, was still happening there.

Maybe we have a chance to stop it. At least some of it.

His grimace grew deeper. That would depend on how eager Captain Thill was to take action instead of waiting for word from the GDZS Fraternity in orbit.

His comm chimed, and when he glanced up at the indicator on the inside of his faceplate, he sighed. He’d known it was coming. By regulation, the conversation that was about to begin was supposed to run through all the officers. But the officers were all “democratically” elected, and few knew how to find their own asses with both hands and a lumen, in a brightly lit room, with directions. He’d figured that out about the time he’d pinned on Sergeant. Probably before.

So he was going to take the call, make the decisions that needed to be made, and then get Captain Thill to sign off on them after the fact. Provided this wasn’t one of those days when the captain decided he really needed to be “in charge.”

“Send it.”

“First Sergeant, it’s Sergeant Al Tabaq.” First Platoon’s platoon sergeant was competent enough, and a rare man in that he hadn’t yet become a complete cynic. There was still some of the idealist in Sergeant First Class Al Tabaq—but not so much that he wouldn’t use the back channels with his senior enlisted superiors to try to get something done. “The seekers can see a fight still going on around one of the farmsteads on the west side of town. It’s a bit one-sided, but the lizards seem to be determined to kill as many of the locals as possible before we get there.”

The locals called the otuchans kesertkeler, which translated as “lizards,” so many of the Zolarians had started calling them that months before. Always out of earshot of the officers, of course. Being heard using disparaging terms for any of the “natives” of Zhogalgan, human or otuchan, was grounds for a severe dressing-down, if not actual disciplinary action, depending on what kind of a spectacle the officer in question wanted going on his record.

Draven sighed, glancing over at Captain Thill, who was riding in the command blower’s middle seat, apparently oblivious to anything but the holo status board in front of him. A status board that wasn’t nearly as updated as the information that Draven had just gotten from Al Tabaq.

Al Tabaq wasn’t finished yet, though. “I’ve also got four of the big crawlers starting to move onto the high ground to the south. Looks like they’re getting ready to intercept us. Might have spotters up there, too.”

Almost certainly. The otuchans on Zhogalgan might not have top-of-the-line equipment, but they knew how to make war.

“Hold your position. Don’t take them under fire unless fired upon.” The rules of engagement sounded tired and timid, especially after the last ten thousand hours on this stark, cold planet, trying to keep the lid on a conflict that seemed increasingly like it was uncontainable. Every attempt to keep the otuchans and the Zhogalganites apart seemed to inevitably end in violence, unless the humans and aliens were presented with overwhelming force.

Draven could understand why. The otuchans had gotten violent as soon as their explorers on the ground had come in contact with the humans, the descendants of a Eurasian Concordium exploration ship that had crashed the better part of a generation before. Since then both colonies had subsisted on shoestrings, which had been the only thing keeping the conflict from boiling over decades before. They simply hadn’t been close enough, their epicenters on opposite sides of the planet.

There were many movers and shakers in the Grand Democracy of Zolah who insisted that the otuchans’ violence was perfectly justified. While they weren’t particularly communicative with aliens, estimates put the establishment of the otuchan settlement at almost half a million hours before the Kotszebue suffered a catastrophic failure in orbit, forcing the crew to abandon ship for the surface before the starship crashed. The scar was still visible from space, just south of the massive north polar ice cap.

Draven had seen too much to think it was that simple, but that chronological nitpicking had cemented the ROE in place. Neither side was right or wrong, according to the decision makers light years away, and the Zolarian peacekeepers’ job was simply to keep them apart until they came to their senses and made peace.

It hadn’t worked yet, though, and he was seriously starting to doubt that it ever would. Still, that was the mission.

At least, it was the official mission. Everyone on the ground knew that no one would care about this frozen desert of a planet if it hadn’t been right on the edge of Corvanite space. The fact that the Corvanites had shown up not long after the Zolarian peacekeeping mission had started only cemented the fact that the Grand Democracy wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Sir?” He didn’t want to have this conversation with the captain. Under these circumstances, though, he didn’t have the pull that he’d need to make this work otherwise. “We’ve got a situation here.”

Thill looked up from the status holo. “It appears that the raid force has already mostly moved off, First Sergeant. We should be clear to move in.”

Draven shook his head, though his hardsuit limited the movement. “There’s more, sir. That holo hasn’t updated yet.” Even as he said it, more red blips from the lead platoon’s seekers started to crop up around the outside of the village. “It looks like the liz—the otuchans are preparing to launch a counterattack. They’ve got crawlers maneuvering to try to hit us with a pincer.”

The captain’s faceplate hid most of his expression, but Draven got the impression that he was frowning as he leaned forward to study the holo more closely. “No, that can’t be allowed. We have to get in there and secure that village.” He tapped a key on his gauntlet. “I’m calling for support. This needs to be ended, now.”

Draven did frown, though he turned his head back toward the front to make sure the captain couldn’t see the expression. Thill tended to be touchy about perceived insubordination.

The irony—in a supposedly egalitarian, democratic society—was not lost on the first sergeant.

Still, it wasn’t the captain’s touchy ego that was bothering Draven at the moment, but the fact that they were, apparently, ready to make an actual fight out of this. So far, there had been very few actual battles fought in this operation, at least until the Corvanites had arrived and had decided, as was their way, to try to end the conflict by crushing the otuchans. The Zolarians had mostly been concerned with stopping fights—even when they probably should have been following the Corvanites’ example.

That last observation was one that Draven knew he could never air.

Thill was already deep in communication with the tactical coordination center aboard the Fraternity. That left Draven to coordinate the movement on the ground. Fortunately, he was used to that.

“All Able Company, this is First Sergeant Draven. We are to advance and secure the village. Captain Thill is currently coordinating support. First Platoon, hold your position and be prepared to interdict otuchan forces on the high ground by fire. Second and Third, get on-line and prepare to sweep through the village. Fourth, you are in reserve.” This was all according to company standard operating procedure, something that he’d worked up with the sergeants second and first class, since the officers mostly couldn’t be bothered. So far, those same officers had allowed the noncoms to do what needed doing. So far. “Mortar section, set up and dial in for fire missions on the following coordinates.” He looked at his holo map and rattled off the applicable alphanumeric combinations.

After receiving acknowledgments, he popped the blower’s hatch and stepped out onto the top deck. The vehicle had all the necessary sensors and seeker feeds to keep him up to date while buttoned up, but Draven had always preferred to get his own eyes on a situation. Even if it meant that he had to continue to update via comms, it was preferable to sitting in an armored box, staring at holo displays that didn’t update as fast as his platoon noncoms could send him messages.

The little village of Az Ku was one of the farthest out of the human settlements, sitting on the lap of a domed hill, using the meager stream that was kept flowing by a spring high on the hillside for water. The buildings, like most Zhogalganite habitations, were relatively plain blocks of brick topped by greenhouses to take as much advantage of the distant and relatively faint sunlight as possible—but now most of those buildings, at least those that he could see from his vantage point, were wrecked and smoking. Still more smoke came from several trucks and tractors that were burning fiercely, releasing columns of inky blackness that billowed high into the sky, and dust rose along the settlement’s outskirts as both the Zolarian mechanized infantry and the otuchan raiders jockeyed for position.

The otuchan maneuver element was a lot closer than he’d imagined from Sergeant Al Tabaq’s report. This could get out of hand quickly.

Even as the thought crossed Draven’s mind, a salvo of rockets roared out from a position near the top of the rocky dome. He winced as a fireball blossomed on the flats, heralding the death of one of First Platoon’s blowers. At least six men and women were gone in an eyeblink. And he wasn’t sure that their deaths were even remotely necessary.

“Drone section, immediate fire mission, Target One.”

He watched helplessly as the remainder of First Platoon spread out and tried to fight back, lifting his magnifiers just in time to see another blower get blasted, though fortunately only after most of the soldiers had gotten out. Muzzle flashes flickered along the mostly barren slope where the Zolarians fought back, though several more fell to well-aimed otuchan rifle fire in the next few moments, dropped before they could get to cover. Those heavy rifles could still do some serious damage to Zolarian hardsuits.

The combat drones were taking far too long, he thought. In truth it was only a handful of seconds before the buzzing flying wings began to swarm skyward and arrow toward the otuchan positions, but it felt like an achingly long time to stand and wait, unable to fire a shot or do anything else to help those kids up there on the hill. Finally the buzzing, suicidal robot flyers began to hit, smashing into the hilltop with earthshaking whams that reached him several seconds after the black fountains of debris vaulted into the air.

The otuchan fire seemed to slacken after that, though it was still hard to tell from this distance. He lowered his magnifiers and was about to look for a combat blower that could get him up there when Captain Thill’s voice came over his comms.

“First Sergeant Draven, where are you?”

He dropped back into the hatch. “Right here, sir.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, First Sergeant.” As always, there was a note that almost sounded like a whine in the captain’s voice. “I need you nearby to pass orders along.”

With modern comms, there was no need for an intermediary… unless that intermediary was needed to interpret the commander’s intent through decades of experience and training that the commander lacked. Not that this would ever be said out loud in the Grand Army of Zolah.

“Sorry, sir.” Draven was somewhat proud of the fact that he didn’t grit his teeth as he said it. Captain Thill was far from the first officer he’d had to manage. “I needed to get a better view and help direct the troops.” He only ever “helped.” Never directed himself. Yes, he was quite experienced at this game. He never would have made the rank of First Sergeant if he hadn’t figured it out a long time ago.

“Well, we have air support on the way. You should have held on until then.”

Draven bit back a curse. “There wasn’t time, sir. The otuchans on the hill turned out to be far closer than we thought. First Platoon has already taken losses.”

Thill jerked his head back to the holo display. He was far too married to that thing. It could only update via transmissions from the Fraternity, either direct from the flagship itself or relayed through one of the satellites or another Zolarian starship in orbit. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. The starfighters will be on station in thirty seconds.”

Which wouldn’t be enough to save those soldiers up on the hill, but there was nothing Draven could do about it now. If he tried to do what he’d been contemplating just a moment ago—jump across to a combat blower to join the fight—there would be a fight, all right. With Captain Thill.

He’d win the fight and lose the war. He’d known that for a lot of years as a noncom.

“We’ll need to deconflict with the drones, sir.” Even after centuries of technological progress, the simplest concerns were still paramount. Like not letting an explosive drone and a starfighter try to occupy the same space at the same time.

“Handle it, First Sergeant.”

Draven did grit his teeth then, if only for a moment, before he put his professional face back on and called off the drone section.

It was longer than thirty seconds, even as the drone launches ceased and the firefight up on the shoulder of the hill intensified, before the ZX-74 Hunter II starfighters came down out of the sky with a thunderous scream. Sleek arrowheads that glinted silver in the sun, they flashed by overhead—well above where the mortars had been firing—and sent missiles streaking down toward the hilltop. The explosions dwarfed the drone impacts, and all otuchan fire from the hilltop ceased.

“Continue the sweep.” Captain Thill was watching the holo display again. “We need to have this village secured as soon as possible.” He looked up. “Especially all weapons and ordnance. Under our control as quickly as humanly possible, First Sergeant.”

Draven frowned. That directive just seemed like common sense on a peacekeeping mission, but there was an urgency to the captain’s insistence that seemed… odd.

But he didn’t react, didn’t argue. He simply relayed the orders as the remainder of Able Company began to glide through the ruins of Az Ku, dust and smoke billowing from beneath the blowers’ skirts.

CHAPTER 3

“What is that, First Sergeant?” Private First Class Pauli was staring at the stack of weapons they’d gathered from the bodies on top of the hill.

Draven was glad—for probably the first time—of the standard operating procedures that mandated that all Zolarian soldiers wear full hardsuits in combat zones. The whole hilltop probably still stank of smoke, scorched metal, blood, and death.

Sergeant Second Class Anthony smacked the private in the back of the head. Fortunately, Lieutenant Aramis wasn’t around to see it. “What does it look like, Private? It’s a stack of weapons. Now shut up and go help PFC Contes.”

Chastened, Pauli hurried away, toward where several more of the survivors of First Platoon were helping some of the Baker Company reinforcements with the bodies.

Anthony waited while the private scurried away, then looked around, over his shoulder. When he spoke again, he was using his external speakers, pitched low so that his words wouldn’t travel far. “This doesn’t look good, First Sergeant.”

Draven had to agree, though he held his peace as he looked down at the stack of weapons piled on the ground. They had obviously been modified for otuchan claws, but he knew human-designed weapons when he saw them. He even recognized the make, which was worse. Apart from the fact that the Zhogalgan otuchans didn’t even use composites—they still lacked the industrial capacity—the weapons were plainly stamped with the name Wathelet Fabrications. Wathelet was native to Aube Prime, a densely populated world only about twenty light years from Zolah, and one of the Grand Democracy’s oldest and staunchest allies.

He was putting the pieces together in his head, and he didn’t like it.

He already knew what the official explanation would be. He even hoped that it was true. Smugglers were bringing weapons in and selling them to the otuchans for some reason.

But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. After all, with a Zolarian battle squadron in orbit, not to mention the Corvanite ships, crewed by those famously alert and belligerent warmongers, who would be able to get through?

“First Sergeant?” Another private—Zinni, he thought—was pointing toward the south. “Looks like we’ve got someone coming.”

Draven turned toward the dust cloud and lifted his magnifiers again, feeling his stomach tighten. The dust obscured a lot, but he recognized Corvanite combat crawlers. And the gunships flying overhead.

This was about to get even more complicated.

***

Bannon watched the dust rise in the wake of the two Zolarian armored hovercraft as they came out to meet the Third Phalanx. His expression stayed stony as he ordered the column to halt and form a skirmish line. The ground-pounders would dismount and use the crawlers for cover, since the plain was pretty open, with little in the way of cover or concealment available for some distance. He didn’t expect the Zolarians to start anything, but Corvanites don’t get complacent.

At least, that was what he told himself. He’d been in service long enough that he’d seen all sorts of things happen that weren’t supposed to.

He turned away from the armored viewport and followed the other soldiers out of the crawler. Sergeant Hern was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp. Hern’s Third Squad was out on the right flank, but Hern had been his assistant squad leader when Bannon had been Third Squad’s sergeant, and despite some of the Corvanite indoctrination, Hern still felt responsible for his old squad sergeant.

“Need some backup, sir?”

Bannon smiled grimly. Hern was dark and gaunt, and while it wasn’t standard for a squad sergeant, he was still carrying his thirty-seven-millimeter grenade launcher mounted underneath his CR-196. “That’s why the phalanx is dismounted and the lasers are manned, Hern. Besides, I don’t think the turtles are going to start anything.” Bannon didn’t know who had started calling the perpetually hardsuited Zolarians “turtles,” but it fit. Their institutional fear of casualties made them bulky and slow, in an environment where that could be a considerable disadvantage.

Hern wasn’t smiling back, though. “I’m not so sure, Lieutenant.” He cast a baleful glare in the Zolarians’ direction. “There aren’t many places those weapons could have come from. They don’t mean us any good.”

Bannon’s grin got wider. He found that he was suddenly gripped by a sort of devil-may-care boldness, despite the anger that he shared with Hern over the losses they’d taken in the ambush. The Zolarians were up to no good, just as Hern had said, but he was fairly sure he had the game figured out.

“No doubt. To them, we’re the tyrannical villains of the galaxy. But here’s the thing.” Bannon paused, one hand on the crawler’s hull, just before stepping out to where the Zolarian gunners could see him, at least through the cameras of their remote turrets. “If they wanted an open war, they wouldn’t be sending the otuchans weapons to do their dirty work for them. They’re still hoping to keep their distance, drive us off and keep their hold here on our doorstep without looking like the bad guys.” He nodded to the Wathelet rifle in his off hand. “This might be a match to tinder, but it won’t happen right away.”

Hern hefted his grenade launcher. “I’m still going to blow them apart if they twitch wrong.”

“I would hope for nothing less.” Keeping the captured weapon down by his side, his gun hand still on his own rifle’s pistol grip, Bannon swung around the back of the crawler and advanced to meet the “turtles.”

The pair of hovercraft had come to a halt, their fans slowing and easing their bulk to the ground. Their skirts scraped on the dust and gravel, flattening some of the low, lichen-like growth that was about all the ground cover that grew outside of the “green zones” around the rivers, lakes, and small inland seas that formed Zhogalgan’s hydrosphere. Bannon waited, standing next to the Chariot 72’s front wheels, the gunner looming above him, his combat laser not quite pointed at the Zolarian vehicles. For a long moment, he did think about just how easy it would be for the Zolarian gunners to kill him without exposing themselves in the slightest. He was sure that they’d have some handy excuse about threats, either to themselves or to the otuchans, too.

The Zolarians had made no secret of their dislike for Corvanite “peacekeeping” policy.

The turtles didn’t open fire, though. Instead a hatch opened in the top of the sleek, lozenge-shaped armored vehicle, and a man in an equally sleek hardsuit, seemingly all overlapping, rounded plates, climbed out. Unlike Bannon, the man with three and three stripes on his pauldron, three angled up and three angled down, did not carry a weapon. That didn’t mean he was unarmed, but he didn’t have one of the sleek bullpup rifles in his hands that the Zolarians carried standard. A strip on his chest plate read “Draven.”

The man in the hardsuit dropped to the ground, landing somewhat heavily. Even with gravity at only about three-quarters of a G, those suits weren’t light. Bannon was aware that the Zolarian suits were fully articulated and could essentially stand by themselves. They needed to be that rigid, with some assisted movement, given their weight and what the Corvanites perceived as the low standards that the Zolarians kept for their soldiers.

“You are too late, Lieutenant.” The voice from the hardsuit spoke Anglisch, though with a decided accent. The Zolarians had no less than three official languages, Anglisch being only one of them. “The fighting here is over.”

Bannon regarded his interlocutor in silence. They were both human, and in fact, probably of similar ancestry. Both Zolarians and Corvanites had sprung from the same culture, if you went back far enough. Corvan Major and Minor had been colonized by North American veterans of the Thelon and Newlander Wars. Zolah had been settled nearly a century earlier by North Americans and Western Europeans. Yet their cultures were remarkably different, and Bannon eyed the Zolarian noncommissioned officer with all the wariness with which he might face an otuchan.

Then he flung the Wathelet rifle into the dust at the Zolarian’s feet. “I don’t doubt it. Did they back off when they saw their weapons suppliers show up?”

The Zolarian looked down at the rifle. He didn’t reply for a long moment, then turned his faceless, tinted visor up to face Bannon again. “I lost nearly half a platoon in this fight, Corvanite. You should be more careful about what accusations you throw around.”

Bannon took a step forward, and despite the immobility of the hardsuit, the other man stiffened. “There aren’t that many possibilities, Zolarian. The locals sure don’t have the resources, even if they were inclined to arm the otuchans who’ve been slaughtering them at every opportunity for the last local year. And we would be highly unlikely to arm the creatures we’re trying to protect those locals from, wouldn’t we?” He stared at the Zolarian. “It certainly wouldn’t have been us who gave the otuchans information to help them know we were coming so they could set up an ambush, either.”

The Zolarian didn’t reply at once. He just stood there, like a statue, watching Bannon. His mouth set, Bannon returned his stare, though neither man could see the other’s eyes.

Bannon had interacted with a few Zolarians over the last two hundred-odd days. Many of those interactions had been stiff, awkward, downright hostile. Not unlike this one. Yet he’d seen enough, and he’d been in service long enough, across many worlds, that he could tell that while many of them really were the venal, corrupt worms that most sons of Corvan Major and Minor thought they were, there were still men and women of honor among them. Most of those he’d met on Zhogalgan were senior enlisted men. The Corvanites didn’t maintain wholly separate officer and enlisted corps—their officers were always promoted from sergeants—so they didn’t have the same sort of senior enlisted men that the Zolarians did. But Bannon knew that most Zolarian NCOs with this man’s number of stripes had acquired time in service equivalent to that of a Corvanite captain. That often came with a similar degree of experience, wisdom… and cynicism.

Whether this man was one of the honest ones, or another political climber without the clout to get a commission, remained to be seen. And Bannon had to expect that the man’s loyalty to his own people would keep him from revealing any cynicism about his command’s actions to a Corvanite.

“We are here to keep the peace, Corvanite,” the Zolarian said. “Not to make the war worse.”

Bannon’s eyes narrowed. There was a stiffness to the words, as if the man didn’t entirely believe them himself but wasn’t going to admit that. But there was also that loyalty—and hostility to the Council of Corvan and its warriors—and that would be enough to keep this confrontation where it stood.

“So you say. Yet you and your commanders try to freeze it in a place where it can only flare up again, unless peacekeepers stay here until the sun burns out.” He tilted his head slightly, studying the man’s tinted faceplate. “Unless that’s the idea? A permanent Zolarian outpost, less than ten light years from the nearest Corvanite-aligned world?”

Again, there was that hesitation. “I’m just a soldier, Lieutenant. I don’t make policy.”

So that was the play. Fall back on orders and duty. Not that he could blame the man, especially if he’d already lost people. It’s hard to confront the reality of bad orders when those orders have already cost in lives. No leader wants his subordinates’ deaths to have been for nothing.

Bannon pointed to the rifle lying in the dust. “Well then, First Sergeant, take that to your superiors and tell them that the sons of Corvan know what’s going on, even if their own people don’t.” He started to turn back toward the crawlers, confident that Hern and Private Gray would ensure he wasn’t about to be shot in the back. “We are going to end this war, First Sergeant. Tell them that, too.”

“I’ll tell them about our conversation, Lieutenant.” The man in the hardsuit kept his voice neutral, his accent faint. He didn’t move to pick up the rifle on the ground, or to retreat toward his hovercraft.

Bannon just stalked away. He needed to report to Captain Haarot and get further instructions.

CHAPTER 4

Captain Haarot leaned on the map table, frowning down at the projection of Az Ku and the Zolarian positions around it.

He had recalled Third Phalanx after Bannon had reported from his combat crawler and described the size of the Zolarian forces. It had taken nearly until evening for Bannon to get his phalanx settled in their laager area, gather the combat replacements and turn them over to their squad sergeants, then come report directly to the captain. Fatigue wore at him, but he held himself straight as his commanding officer looked over the map table.

Haarot tapped the surface, zooming out to a larger map that showed the sector boundaries and general dispositions of both Corvanite and Zolarian forces. Those sectors had been established by agreement between Lieutenant General Pleimelding, overall Zolarian commander, and Commander Fox.

Az Ku was definitely on the Corvanite side of the line. As was the ambush site where the otuchans had hit Third Phalanx.

“They had how many, again? The Zolarians?” The captain seemed to be working through multiple facets of the problem in his head, coming at it from different angles.

Bannon studied his commander, seeing a side of Haarot that he didn’t think he had before. Ordinarily, the commanding officer of the 102nd Company took in all the information given, then dismissed his subordinates to think things over on his own.

“It appeared to be a full company, sir, with starfighters circling overhead.” He maintained his position of parade rest, though he let his eyes settle on the map. “I couldn’t see whether they had tank support or not, but there were at least fifteen of their personnel hovercraft.”

Haarot ran a hand over his jaw, frowning. “Either they’ve gotten considerable reinforcements, or they really didn’t want us anywhere near that village. They haven’t concentrated that large a unit anywhere for weeks.”

“Have you heard of any new landings, sir?” Bannon almost hesitated to say it. It wasn’t unknown for Haarot to bite the head off a junior who asked too many questions.

The captain didn’t even look up at him, though. “No. Nothing that’s been on the regular briefs. That’s not to say that they couldn’t have gotten a drop shuttle down here or there without us noticing. They have more ships in the system at the moment than we do.”

That was sure to change, but right at the moment, Bannon was starting to think that the vaunted Corvanite belief in their superiority at all things warfare was threatening to get out of control. There was something to be said for that belief. The sons of Corvan Major and Minor had proven their combat prowess a hundred times over. When it became a matter of believing the Council’s own propaganda, however, it could become a liability. And while he would put any Corvanite soldier up against ten Zolarians, Bannon had to admit that they were currently outnumbered, outgunned, and in a lot of trouble if the Zolarians decided to initiate an open war.

While Bannon was only a phalanx leader, he knew enough about what was going on in the galaxy at large to be sure of what would happen next: that war would rapidly spin out of control. The Council and the “Grand Democracy” each held sway over spheres of influence that spanned dozens of worlds—many with other alliances, as well—and hundreds of light years.

He was reasonably sure that that was the entire reason both powers had turned their attention to this rock. It was situated right on the “border,” as much as there could be borders in interstellar space.

As Haarot zoomed the map out yet again, taking in most of this hemisphere of the planet as well as the Zolarian and Corvanite starships in orbit, Bannon wondered: How reluctant am I to see that war happen, really? So far, the Council had seen fit to play the Zolarians’ game on Zhogalgan, but as a Corvanite, Bannon wondered just why they weren’t driving the turtles off the planet and dealing with the conflict in a way that would decisively end it.

After all, he’d grown up with stories of the Newlander Wars, and how the Corvanite military was intended to always be ready for the inevitable reignition of those wars, since the Americans, the Kuroshio Alliance, the Columbians, the Elderheimers, and the other minor allies had never finished things, never ensured that the Newlanders wouldn’t come boiling out of Alpha Centauri to force their ideal “new humanity” on the rest of the galaxy again. Those wars had ended in a truce, not a victory, and the Corvanites had been preparing for the end of that truce since the Founding.

Corvanites fought to win. No matter the cost. Death comes, and the Corvanites go to meet it. Why were they playing along with the Zolarians’ charade here?

The part of him that still held to what he’d been taught on the agoge field felt that way. The part that had seen a dozen wars across as many worlds and as many years knew that it was never that simple. Ending a conflict decisively could save a lot of lives in the long run, but rushing into a war as big as that would result in casualties in the millions, if not the billions.

Corvanites lived for battle, but there was a difference between battle and slaughter.

None of this was anything he’d voice to Captain Haarot. The captain would consider any such questions a waste of time. They were Corvanites, and they had to trust the Council and follow orders. The key to victory was discipline, first and foremost.

Even if Bannon felt that it would be in everyone’s best interest to simply have it out with the Zolarians, once and for all.

Haarot studied him, and Bannon shifted his gaze to stare at a point on the wall just above the captain’s head. For a long moment, he felt those hard, cold eyes bore into him.

“I’m assigning your phalanx to reconnaissance duty, Lieutenant.” Bannon straightened, clasping his hands behind his back. “Your target zone will begin ten miles to the west of the no man’s land between human and otuchan territory. I’m not expecting you to engage the otuchans that far from support, though. I’ve spoken with Commander Fox, and you will have a flight of drop shuttles and starfighters on call for the duration of your mission.”

He tapped the map with one finger. “If the Zolarians really are arming the otuchans, then we need to know. We need proof, not only for the Council, but for the locals and any other observers. Our ships are not the only ones in the system. There are others who might come in on the Zolarians’ side if we overplay our hand here, and while I share in our people’s opinion that one Corvanite is worth any ten offworlders, sheer numbers can still work against us. Find us the evidence we need to crush the Zolarians and drive them off the planet. Give us a rallying cry for the locals, the Council, and every other world within a parsec.

“The Zolarians are trying to take Zhogalgan as an outpost to use against us, while wrapping themselves in a mantle of righteousness. You know it, and I know it. Get me intel to confirm it and rip that mask right off.”

Bannon stiffened to attention. He’d never heard Haarot justify his orders to a subordinate like this before. If anything, it made Bannon even more determined to succeed. He didn’t know what was behind his commander’s newfound volubility, but it had to be something important.

Haarot studied him for another long moment. “Do you know why I’m trusting you with this, Bannon?”

“No, sir.”

“Hmm. Well, if you make it back, maybe I’ll tell you. Dismissed.”

***

“Squad sergeants up!”

Bannon’s bellow echoed through the massive maintenance shed that had been turned into Third Phalanx’s squad bay. They were on the outskirts of Zhanaozen, the second-largest spaceport on the human side of the planet, though still a small town by most other standards in the galaxy. That was to be expected for a colony that had started as a shipwreck less than a Corvan Major century ago. It was a testament to the locals’ determination to survive that they’d established themselves as well as they had in the last two generations.

The three squads each had their own areas, though they were divided more by space and personnel than by physical barriers. Blocks of cots and gear trees stood together in formations, usually with the squad sergeants at the end closest to where Bannon and his small command team had set up. Sergeant Ollan, his assistant phalanx leader, looked up but then returned to his data tablet. Bannon wasn’t especially surprised, and he’d long ago given up trying to change his assistant. Ollan was useful for many of the organizational and logistical tasks of the phalanx, but he was far from a front-line performer in combat, and his sullen attitude often ground on those around him. If not for his admitted talent with the support elements required of an assistant phalanx leader, he probably never would have been promoted at all.

Heads turned, and three men quickly came to their feet. Sergeant Hern finished whatever he was telling his squad before moving toward Bannon’s voice. Corporal Summ, who had been one of Bannon’s squad once upon a time, before being promoted and moved over to be Sergeant Munoz’s assistant, almost ran over. Sergeant Killian beat Hern to the assembly and briefing area by a couple of strides, though he was more measured than Summ. Everything about Killian was measured, which, despite Bannon’s personal history with Hern and Summ, made the lieutenant appreciate his senior squad sergeant all the more. Killian was a mountain of a man who carefully thought through everything, and Bannon had never seen him do anything out of passion or emotion.

He looked around the phalanx for a moment. It had changed a great deal over the last Corvan Major year. He’d already needed to rebuild half the phalanx before they’d even come to Zhogalgan, and now none of the squad sergeants who had been Bannon’s peers before Captain Haarot had promoted him were left. Replacements had become a depressingly regular occurrence on Zhogalgan. Bannon had seen the need for them often enough during his twelve years of service so far that he felt like he should have gotten used to it. That was the price they paid as Corvanites. Readiness meant more than gear and training. It meant being proactive in a galaxy where their enemies were always on the move, and that meant losses.

Summ was still in his combat uniform, a synthetic, flexible set of garments that went underneath the hardsuit without bunching. Corvanite hardsuits were sleeker, lighter, and more modular than the Zolarian suits, and even then the Corvanites didn’t like to use them unless absolutely necessary. They were bulky and constricted movement at times when neither factor was desirable. Hern and Killian, being somewhat more experienced, both with the job and with Bannon, had stripped down to their running gear, though they were still wearing the full-length stuff. It never got that warm on Zhogalgan, a consequence of the fact that the planet was right on the outer edge of the star’s green zone. The maintenance shed wasn’t heated, either.

“All right.” Bannon folded his arms as he looked around at his squad sergeants. “We’re being detached for a special assignment. Consider this our warning order. We will be running long-range reconnaissance past the no man’s land along the Zhartasty Su river. Our most likely opposition will be otuchans, but Captain Haarot and Commander Fox expect that we may face threats from the turtles as well.” A spoken-word warning order in their PT gear was informal enough that he didn’t feel the need to abstain from using the slang term. “After what we found at that ambush site, and the Zolarian reaction at Az Ku, we suspect that they are running weapons and tech to the otuchans, presumably to try to drive us off the planet, giving them an outpost right on our doorstep. Confirming or denying this is our mission.

“It’s going to be a long way out, and while Captain Haarot assures me that we will have drop shuttles and starfighters on call, I want to be prepared for a prolonged patrol without support. That means extra water, food, power packs, ammunition, the works. It’s going to be a tight fit in the crawlers for the first few days, but this is important.”

Hern, dark and gaunt, glowered at the word that the Zolarians were suspected of running guns to the otuchans. Summ just tried to look serious. Summ was young for his rank, and clearly still felt out of place as a squad sergeant. He’d earned the rank and the billet through courage and level-headedness on the battlefield, but Killian had been a squad sergeant when Summ had still been a private, and that had to be daunting.

As for Killian, he simply took it all in with that heavy-lidded look that he wore so often. He would comment if he had a question, or saw a better way to do something, but otherwise, the man said as little as possible.

“Get your squads prepping, then meet back up here in an hour to start mission planning.” Bannon checked his chrono. “I’ll need to be back up at headquarters to conduct final support coordination in three hours, so we might or might not get all the way finished.”

“Do we have an actual target area, sir?” Hern was frowning more deeply than usual. “Or are we just going to cross the river and go wandering wherever? There’s a lot of empty country out there.”

Even after the better part of a century and a half since the otuchans had made planetfall—as near as any human observers had managed to determine—and only slightly less than that for the human population, the actual inhabited parts of Zhogalgan were still small, leaving the vast majority of the planet’s surface stark, cold wilderness.

“I have a set of areas of interest from Captain Haarot, based on orbital observation from the Thunderer and the Relentless.”

Bannon still wasn’t entirely sure himself just how productive those areas of interest were going to be. The imagery he’d seen looked like mostly rocky areas of low hills that might or might not shelter otuchans, smugglers, or Zolarian cargo shuttles. He’d been told that the Thunderer had detected anomalous signals in the vicinity of each zone, but that could mean just about anything, especially given the weird activity of Zhogalgan’s magnetic field. Starships in orbit had their limitations despite the advances in sensor technology over the last few centuries since the first satellites had been used to photograph the surface of the Earth. Weather and the presence of potentially hostile ships in similar orbits were two of the most common such limitations. That was why ground reconnaissance was still a valid mission set.

He looked around at his squad leaders. Summ was busily taking notes, hardly looking up. Hern was himself, and Killian looked indifferent as usual, though Bannon had gotten to know the big man well enough to know that there was a lot going on behind that blank expression. Killian was already working through plans and what he was going to need each of his squad members to do. He was a good soldier and a better leader, despite his taciturn nature.

Hern smirked as he peered at the map. “It’s going to be hard on Lewiski. Otuchan females aren’t nearly as easy on the eyes as the Zhogalganite girls.”

Summ looked up with a frown. “He can tell the difference between the otuchan males and females?”

Killian chuckled. “It’s Lewiski. He can tell.”

Bannon shook his head. “One hour. Then we meet back here to start planning.”

The three squad sergeants came to their feet. Bannon had served under phalanx leaders who would have given a speech or demanded salutes under such circumstances, but that wasn’t his style.

“Dismissed.”

CHAPTER 5

Draven looked around at the bleak landscape around the column and wondered just what was going on. Dust rolled up from the blowers’ fans, and he was grateful for the hardsuit and its filtration systems, never mind the enhanced vision that kept him from being completely blinded by the clouds of grit. It also gave him a little bit more visibility past the column, at the slowly rising hills in the distance. He almost thought he could see the blue-white line of the northern polar ice cap far beyond, though that was probably just his imagination. They were still much too far south, even if their route was taking them quite a ways into the northern desert that lay between the Zhartasty Su river and the vast tundra of the Karangy Ustel plateau.

He was also glad that the extra logistics skimmers had come along; they were probably going to need them. It had been a bit of a fight to get them attached to the company—Captain Thill had insisted that they increased the unit’s footprint too much, that their vehicles’ reclamation systems should provide enough water, and that rations could be cut down to twice a day if the movement went too long. But Draven had dug in his heels, and won.

Captain Thill owed his rank and position more to connections, money, and political maneuvering than experience and skill, whereas Draven had been in the service for almost one hundred sixty-one thousand hours. He was almost ready to retire, and, truth be told, he would have earlier if not for officers like Captain Thill. Someone had to keep the troopers insulated from people like him.

A pair of Frelon gunships growled past in the distance, their tilt-jets angled for low and slow flight. Draven watched them, his HUD highlighting the vaguely insectoid machines, wondering just what they hoped to find out in this wasteland.

He’d heard the briefing multiple times. The Corvanites were reportedly pushing out across the Zhartasty Su river, and General Pleimelding was convinced that if they weren’t countered, they would potentially launch an attack against the otuchans, negating the entire purpose of the peacekeeping mission on Zhogalgan. They were here to stop a war from happening, not prosecute one.

Draven didn’t know how much he believed it. The river was several hours behind them, and so far they had seen no dust but their own, no machines besides Zolarian blowers and gunships. Nor was there any sign of any Corvanite or Zhogalganite base. He would have ordered his outriders to look for tracks, but they were moving too fast. In fact, they appeared to be heading for a very specific destination—one that Captain Thill had so far not seen fit to reveal to his first sergeant.

Draven leaned his armored forearms on the hatch coaming, ignoring the complaints from below that he was letting dust into the passenger compartment. The command blower was far enough from any of the platoons that they were hardly in the middle of a dust cloud. And once again, Draven wanted to see.

He also wanted to think. And that was much more doable while turned out in the hatch than it was down in the compartment, where he’d have to listen to Thill talk to himself. Ostensibly the captain was talking to his first sergeant, but it was never a conversation. Captain Thill didn’t have conversations; he made speeches. And they were tiresome.

Draven watched the barren landscape slide by, thankful that his helmet filtered out the screaming whine of the fans. Would it really be that bad to finally have it out with the Corvanites? They’ve killed hundreds of thousands on dozens of worlds, backing up tyrants just because the reformers threatened their sense of order. Then again… is that really what happened? You’ve been on enough of these peacekeeping missions to doubt it. The official narrative from Grand Zolah is never that accurate. Remember Santander?

He grimaced at the thought. Santander had been a mining colony in the Alpha Hyades 776 system. There hadn’t been much there; there weren’t even any planets, just asteroidal debris. Yet there had been a relatively thriving colony inside one of the hollowed-out asteroids. From all accounts, they were run by a family-based corporation, originally formed on Morvan for the purpose of building the colony. Yet they’d been selling materials to companies and worlds that the Grand Democracy of Zolah had deemed insufficiently democratic, including several worlds solidly within the Corvanite sphere of influence.

The strongarm “intervention” hadn’t gone well. And Draven had been among those who’d had to go in and secure the asteroid settlement after a “demonstration shot” from the Liberty II had cracked the outer hull.

It hadn’t been pretty.

He didn’t want to believe that things were as bad as the Corvanites said they were. Sure, there was Zolarian corruption; money had a greatly outsized influence in the functioning of the Zolarian democracy. Reformers were constantly harping on that problem, and it was the source of considerable friction and unrest within Zolarian society. It had ultimately been the cause of the riots that had nearly destroyed the Torransbourg habitat in orbit. But Draven’s concerns went farther than common corruption. He couldn’t escape the fact that he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Zolarians weren’t always the unalloyed good guys. He was far too old, far too experienced, and far too jaded to think that anymore.

Admitting that Corvanites had a point was painful, though.

Do we really want to risk a war with the Corvanites over the otuchans? Have they shown any interest in the coexistence we’ve preached since we came to this planet? Are they really the victims of human starship crash survivors, just because they got here first?

He would give voice to none of these thoughts within earshot of Captain Thill, or any of the officers—or even a few of the noncoms—who might want to curry favor with him. The captain had reiterated their mission multiple times, and if he didn’t believe in it with his whole heart and soul, then he was doing a politician’s job of pretending.

Once more, Draven let his gaze rove over the desolate landscape around them, the only movement visible being the Zolarian blowers and gunships overhead. It was a small miracle that anyone, human or otuchan, had ever managed to survive on this rock. And yet here they were trying to drive each other off it, if not wipe each other out.

And he was caught in the middle, wondering if he agreed with his own people, or those he was supposed to hold in quiet contempt and hostility.

He stayed where he was, suddenly even more reluctant to shut himself back inside the compartment with Captain Thill. They had a long way to go before the company laagered up for the night, but he might just go the whole way turned out.

Unless they got into another fight with the otuchans.

Strange, that he wasn’t expecting a fight with anyone else at the moment…

CHAPTER 6

“Commander? Wormhole emergence, sir.”

Captain Willard Tomas, commanding officer of the Corvanite starship Thunderer, looked up from where he was going over the last watch’s reports of Zolarian and other ship movements in the Zhogalgan orbitals. There were no fewer than forty starships in orbit around this barren world at the moment, most between low and geosynchronous orbits, though there were additional clusters of both Corvanite and Zolarian starships at the Lagrange points between the planet and its larger moon, bringing the totals to closer to a hundred ships in system. Needless to say, neither faction was mixing much with the other, despite the fact that there had been no hostilities declared and no open confrontations. Though as he perused the reports, it did appear that the Zolarian Equality had recently made a high-velocity pass by the Corvanite-held L point before braking and descending once more into upper orbit around the planet proper.

“Identification?” He doubted there would be one yet. The system’s charted wormhole emergence points were both about two astronomical units from the star, and both were currently on the other side of said star. Wormhole emergence points were determined by the gravitational map of a system, and while no one that Tomas was aware of had ever quite managed to predict just how that relationship worked, the emergence points still orbited their stars in a strange part of the orbital dance of worlds, asteroids, and comets. Once they’d been found, they were relatively easy to keep track of—if the tracking station or ship was still in the same system.

“Unknown, sir. It just happened about twenty-seven minutes ago. The ship is still too far out to be much more than a drive flare.”

Tomas smiled. On most Corvanite ships, that degree of informality would be frowned on. For most crewmen aboard the Thunderer, it still would be. Sergeant Keel, however, was only a spacer because of the loss of his leg and one hand on Saat. Even that wouldn’t be sufficient for the leniency Tomas gave his attitude, but the Lion Shield that he’d earned there more than made up for any borderline insubordination. Keel was effectively untouchable, having survived what would have been a heroic sacrifice were anyone else to have tried it. The fact that he was very good at his new specialization only helped.

“Track it and let me know when we have an identification.” Tomas turned his attention back to the reports. There are getting to be an awful lot of starships here for such an otherwise inconsequential world. If Zhogalgan didn’t have wormhole connections to Landreich and Freedom’s Landing, no one would care what happened here. Either to the otuchans or to the human colonists.

He sighed. There was a lot of space out there, but somehow it still felt like it was getting crowded around Zhogalgan. Nothing had happened so far, but there were getting to be a lot of itchy trigger fingers in orbit, especially as the situation on the surface got more and more tense.

The reports of multiple otuchan ambushes on peacekeeping forces, apparently equipped with human weapons, had gotten his attention. He knew that most of his peers would immediately jump to the conclusion that the Zolarians were behind it, and he couldn’t dismiss the distinct possibility. However, while the Zolarians were the most likely suspects, and the vast majority of starships in the system were either Corvanite or Zolarian, they weren’t the only ones, and the Zolarians had been hit in a couple of places as well.

He brought up the list of ships in system, at least that the Thunderer had cataloged. Again, they were mostly Corvanite and Zolarian, though there were at least six that were not.

Two Uhuran vessels, though he had no idea what they were doing there. The Uhurans were never particularly interested in interstellar affairs, in his experience. They were too involved in infighting among their three worlds and the myriad factions that had cropped up in the relatively short time since they’d been settled.

There was also a Columbian scoutship, though Tomas had enough experience that he knew a Columbian Sentinel unit when he smelled it. The Columbia Republic was almost as prickly as the Council of Corvan, though for different reasons, but they did a damned good job of keeping tabs on events around the galaxy. They’d deny the existence of the Sentinel units, but Corvanite intelligence was good, too.

Of the other three, two were ramshackle freighters, presumably trying to make deals to supply the growing squadrons of combat starships in the system. The third was a Riin vessel.

Tomas had heard of the Riin, but he knew next to nothing about them. It was unlikely that they’d be trafficking human weapons, but their reason for being in the system was a mystery, and that ship bore watching.

Shaking his head, he lowered his eyes to finish reading the report.

***

It was nearly the end of the watch when Keel came over to Tomas’s command chair. Tomas had seen the man maneuver deftly in zero G, using only the ship’s interior handholds. There were times when that was much faster than using mag boots. There was no need for hurry at the moment, though, so Keel had walked over.

“We have a tentative identification, sir.” He handed over a data plate. “We can’t tell which ship it is, but it appears to be a Zolotoye Koltso-class cruiser.” The schematics on the plate displayed a blunt, brutish dumbbell design with what looked like a docking bay in the centerline and five radiators splayed out from the engine “bell.” It looked crude compared to the simple cone design of the Thunderer, never mind the spherical front hulls of the Zolarian ships and the slender booms behind them leading to their lozenge-shaped engineering sections. It wasn’t actually that crude; it just looked that way.

Tomas grimaced as he recognized the design and the class. “What is the Eurasian Concordium doing here?”

“If I had to guess, sir, I’d say they will probably announce what they’re doing here by broadband transmission within the next few hours.” Keel kept his voice low, but his cynicism was untouched. “I was there when we had to deal with those pompous savages on Cavanaugh’s End.”

Tomas didn’t comment, still studying the readout. He’d run afoul of the Eurasians a time or two before himself.

Sure enough, as if Keel had read the very fabric of space and time to prophesy, the comms flashed an incoming message, and Tomas ordered it brought up on the main comms station.

“To any and all ships in the Gamma Corvi 822 system, this is the Pavel Nakhimov, Chuner Darkhan commanding.” The man on the screen was small and compact, with a flat face that was set in an expression of combined imperiousness and anger. He was speaking Russo-Uralic, with the computer’s translation into Anglisch a fraction of a second behind, forming an echo to his actual words. “News has reached the Eurasian Concordium that our ethnic brethren, descendants of one of our exploration craft, are now threatened by annihilation from aliens and oppression from alien powers on the planet Zhogalgan.” He straightened slightly, almost as if to make up for his small stature in a command chair that appeared to have been designed for a much larger man. “We have come to ensure the safety and security of our fellow children of the Eurasian motherland, and as a warning to all who would attempt to dominate any of the great Eurasian peoples. We are not alone, and we will not be the only Concordium ship in this system for long.”

Tomas turned his eyes on Keel, who shrugged. “They’re nothing if not predictable, sir.”

Tomas nodded, returning his attention to the holographic tac display. The oncoming Pavel Nakhimov was still on its acceleration leg, a few days away from turnover, but it would be closing in on the planet within a relatively short time.

As if this system wasn’t enough of a powder keg already.

Keel was still standing by his command chair, and Tomas suddenly got the impression that the other man had something else to add. “What is it, Keel?”

Not only did that Lion Shield mean he could get away with a lot, it also meant he didn’t tend to stand on ceremony—technically, the award meant he outranked Tomas, except for the fact that he was on Tomas’s ship—so if he was still standing around, it had to be important. And at the moment, Keel actually looked uncomfortable. No, not uncomfortable. Uncertain. Which was close enough for a man like Keel.

“It may be nothing, sir.” That explained the uncertainty. Keel didn’t like to report on things that might be imaginary. “We picked up two more bursts of Cherenkov radiation, right around the same time the Pavel Nakhimov came through the wormhole. They were small, and we couldn’t quite localize them since the sensors were mostly overloaded with the burst from the wormhole. But if they weren’t just echoes, then they were much closer to the planet.”

Tomas frowned. “Have you got the scanner records?” Keel handed him a data plate. Tomas took it carefully and just as carefully set it to float in front of his eyes. After a while in orbit, zero G became second nature.

His frown deepened. Sure enough, there were two bursts of Cherenkov radiation on the record, small ones, one after another. One out by the planet’s smaller, inner moon, the other on the other side of the planet, visible just above the limb. They weren’t quite at the same time as the wormhole emergence flare, either, which made it look to him like they weren’t just echoes.

“Did we observe anything at either point? Any heat signatures, any other radiation, any visual contacts?”

Keel shook his head ruefully. “None of our major scanners were pointed out there. No Zolarian starships near either position.” It was a weakness, but there was only so much space the Thunderer’s sensors could cover. Space was big.

“Well, keep an eye on it. If we have another visitor, I want to know about it.”

Keel took back the data plate with a strange look in his eye. Tomas knew what the look portended, because he was wondering the same thing.

CHAPTER 7

“Halt here. Circle the vehicles, get security out, and launch the picket drones.” Bannon forced himself to ignore the aches in his back and the gritty feeling in his eyes. It had been a long movement, and Third Phalanx was currently almost two hundred kilometers deep into no man’s land. The sun was just starting to come up, light spreading across the horizon.

The sky on Zhogalgan was a deeper blue than the skies of most planets Bannon had seen. The thinness of the air probably accounted for that. The general lack of water—most of the planet’s hydrosphere being locked in the expansive polar ice caps—also accounted for the wispiness of the very occasional clouds.

He scanned the rocky badlands through his magnifiers. They were far enough from any of the rivers or lakes that there was very little plant life, and most of that was almost as gray as the dust. There was no reason for any living thing to be out here.

Except to hide.

As he scanned the rocky desolation, Bannon couldn’t help but smile. While the Corvanites tended to be a militarily realistic people, their entire culture built around the needs of defense and war, as an officer and a veteran of many years of engagements across the stars he’d heard many other opinions, human and alien, on war. One of the most common was that it was useless for ground troops to try to hide when the orbitals were uncontested. A starship could simply scan the surface and pick them up.

Years of experience had put the lie to that idea. A planet is a very large place, and starships have only so many optics. And even with the relatively calm weather that dominated most of Zhogalgan’s surface, there were still clouds to contend with, not to mention the vast emptiness of the plains, mountains, and tundra. Those who opined about the impossibility of hiding from starships in orbit could never really wrap their brains around just how big a planet really is.

His phalanx wasn’t out in this area because the Thunderer, the Relentless, the Dominator, or any of the lesser Corvanite starships in orbit had seen anything. He was out here because the ships had picked up some faint transmissions—transmissions that were apparently not human in origin.

If the otuchans were moving, they were somewhere in these badlands. And judging by the emissions, they might well be meeting whoever was trafficking arms to them here as well.

Bannon wondered about that as he scanned the windswept rocks. There didn’t appear to be many places out here where a shuttle could land. That didn’t mean there were no usable landing zones, of course, but he wondered if there wasn’t something else going on out here.

That’s why we’re out here. Reconnaissance.

Around him, the phalanx was moving like a well-oiled machine, the crawlers spreading out in a rough circle atop the tableland, facing outward where possible to present the front glacis toward any attacker while the turret guns swiveled to cover the entire three hundred sixty degrees. The command crawler came to the center, more for ease of communication than any misconception that Bannon needed to be protected. He was an officer of the Council of Corvan. His place was in the thick of combat, not hiding behind his men.

With a series of whirs, the disc-shaped sentry drones rose into the air. These were the atmospheric models; the Corvanites had vacuum-capable drones, but they were ground vehicles. Hover rockets in anything but asteroid-level gravity would run out of fuel much too quickly.

Putting his magnifiers away, Bannon climbed down out of the turret, leaving it for Private Gonzalez. “Squad sergeants up.”

He grabbed his rifle as he descended the back ramp, slinging it in front of him and stepping out onto the gray shingle, some of it further pulverized by the crawlers’ passage. The weave tires were good at distributing the vehicles’ weight enough that they rarely got stuck, but the crawlers were just heavy.

Killian was the first to reach the crawler. He glanced inside, where Ollan was still hunched over the comm unit, but if he had an opinion of the senior noncom, he kept it to himself. Hern was right behind him, his helmet off and tucked under one arm. The picket drones hadn’t picked up any movement, otuchan or otherwise, so there was little need for the heavy protective gear, and Bannon appreciated being able to look his subordinates in the eye. While the Corvanite helmets were less faceless with the breather masks detached, the darkened visors that projected all needed combat information—and some unneeded, to the ground-pounders’ never-ending frustration—in front of their eyes still hid their features enough that he preferred to conduct meetings with helmets off, where possible.

Summ was last, rushing up in a hurry, looking furtively at Killian and Hern. Bannon made a mental note to take his junior squad sergeant aside. Summ had been a good corporal, but it was starting to look like he wasn’t quite ready for a sergeant’s billet.

“This will serve as our patrol base for the next few days,” he said. He brought up the overhead display on his data plate. The device could project a holo, but the predawn dusk was still dark enough that he didn’t want to show the light. “Our signals are all coming from somewhere to the west of here. We’ve got a fairly defensible position. I want squads broken up into three- and four-man recon teams. First Squad will have the first patrols.” He highlighted a section of the map. “This will be First’s area of responsibility. We’ll spread out as the next few days go by.” Each Zhogalganite day was approximately twenty-two and a half hours.

He checked his chrono. “I’ll go out with the first patrol.” He pinned Summ with a look. “Have a route and plan ready by sundown.”

Summ looked a bit like an awak in the headlights, but he nodded, unable or unwilling to ask for one of the other squad sergeants to be put on the spot first. Even if he had, Bannon would have denied him. There was a reason Summ was going on the first patrol. Bannon needed to make sure the junior sergeant was getting brought up to standard.

After all, the younger man was his responsibility.

“Sunrise is in twenty-seven minutes. I want the camo shrouds over all the vehicles by then, and anyone on the ground under the shrouds. We’ll hold position until dark, then push out the first patrol.”

***

Zhogalgan didn’t have a lot of axial tilt, so days stayed roughly the same length, depending on latitude, throughout the year. There was some variance, but far less than on Corvan Major and especially Corvan Minor. Corvan Minor could see almost an eleven-hour difference in daylight in some places.

The day dragged by, though most of the Corvanites who weren’t on watch spent as much of that time as possible sleeping. Only Summ and the majority of First Squad were busy, planning their patrols for the following night. Bannon had joined them, there to help Summ along, though he would only intervene if his most junior squad sergeant found himself in over his head.

“Then we’ll move to this promontory here and set up an observation post for the day.” Summ looked up at Bannon, who was leaning against one of First Squad’s crawler wheels, chewing on a ration, volunteering nothing. This was Summ’s patrol. He needed to plan it.

Summ was about to return to his briefing when Altair, currently on the gun, called down. “Corporal Summ? Lieutenant Bannon? We’ve got a contact.”

Bannon was moving before Summ had completely registered the words. He stayed low, scrambling under the camouflage shroud—which should have done a convincing job of making the crawler look like just a part of the landscape, a boulder standing atop the tableland—and toward the ramp at the vehicle’s rear.

Coming up under the turret controls, he tapped the private on the leg. “Let me see.”

The younger man scrambled down out of the gunner’s position, and Bannon slid into his place, putting his eyes to the enhanced targeting module. Altair had locked the targeter onto the contact, so he didn’t need to search.

The dark specks quickly resolved themselves into the rough, boxy outlines of otuchan piston-engine aircraft. Given the resources available to the otuchans on the planet, the use of simpler machines only made sense. It wasn’t that they were too stupid to build more advanced tech—far from it. They simply had been dropped on the planet with next to nothing, and therefore had had to build their civilization from the ground up.

Bannon watched the two aircraft for a few minutes. Their wings laden with weapons, they banked away from the Corvanite patrol base after a short distance. While he couldn’t say that he completely understood otuchan psychology even after two hundred plus days on the planet, that looked very much like an air patrol.

Why would the otuchans be patrolling out here in the middle of nowhere?

That, Ulric, is what we’re here to find out.

He ducked out of the gunner’s position, making way for Summ. “Take a look. Two otuchan attack aircraft.” On some other worlds, they’d have code names for those aircraft, but in all the time that Bannon had been on Zhogalgan, they hadn’t seen any two otuchan vehicles that were exactly alike.

He let Summ take a good look. “Watch their patterns. Map them as best you can.” He was keeping his voice low. He didn’t want the rest of the squad to hear him coaching Summ, lest he undermine their confidence in their squad sergeant. Never let your subordinates’ subordinates see you prompt them. They have to get everything from that leader. That’s the way the chain of command is supposed to work. That wasn’t necessarily a lesson that Captain Haarot would have pressed, but Bannon had found other influences over the years, even though the one man who had set him to thinking beyond the captain’s leadership style hadn’t survived his first mission as phalanx leader.

He couldn’t see Summ, but he could almost feel the younger man’s frown. “They’re not flying that close to our patrol area, sir.”

“Not at the moment.” Bannon sat down in one of the transport seats and folded his arms across his load-bearing gear. “But remember, a pilot can see a lot more than just what’s beneath him. Could their patrol pattern possibly put them in a position to observe our route?” He kept it at that. He needed Summ to think it all through.

The corporal took the message and stayed in the turret, tracking the two aircraft. It was almost ten minutes later that he finally came down. “I can’t see them anymore, sir.”

Bannon nodded. “We know they’re out there now. Let’s get back to planning.”

CHAPTER 8

The stars glittered overhead, only a few faint wisps of cloud visible above the horizon, as Bannon fell in behind Summ on the first reconnaissance patrol.

Over the centuries before and after humanity had left Earth, technology had progressed by leaps and bounds, but one thing remained true: there was no substitute for men on the ground, getting their actual eyes on an objective. There was, similarly, no substitute for infantrymen on foot for certain missions. Alternatives had certainly been tried, including various drones, hover platforms, jetpacks, and powered armor, but the Corvanite philosophy preferred simplicity, and Bannon was much more confident in his men’s ability to pass unseen and unnoticed on foot, using the advanced materials in their fatigues and gear—as well as their own knowledge and use of terrain—to hide them. Anything else was likely to make noise or give off a heat or light signature. They didn’t know that the otuchans had night vision, but intelligence suggested that even if they didn’t have artificial light amplification, their eyes were adaptable to a greater degree than human eyes.

Adamas was on point, slipping down through a draw that led off the tableland toward the jumble of rocks and eroded gullies that formed the badlands. There were a few of the low, lichen-like scrub bushes in the draw, but only a few. Apparently this part of the planet did get a wet season, if brief and violent.

The five Corvanites moved quickly at first. The picket drones had confirmed that they were alone, without any heat sources within a mile—though otuchans didn’t give off as much infrared as humans did. They could cover some ground before they needed to start getting sneaky.

Within minutes, they had vanished into the deepening night, as the combat crawlers’ gunners watched over them from beneath the camouflage shrouds.

***

The night chill set in fast, but the Corvanites’ uniforms were designed to handle it. Lightweight and easy to move in, they kept their wearers warm in the cold and cool in the heat. There were many things that Corvanites preferred to do the old way, but where they could leverage modern tech to their advantage, they would.

Bannon was older than most of the rest of the team, but he kept up easily. That was another aspect of becoming an officer. Corvanite leaders were expected to lead, and that meant he had to hold himself to a higher standard than his men. As they got deeper into the badlands they moved more slowly, as the terrain got worse and stealth became more of a concern.

He scanned the canyon they were moving down. He would have preferred a route a bit higher up, along the military crest of the terrain, but that was pretty sheer and even his men would have struggled to move along it at all, let alone without sending cascades of rocks down toward the canyon floor with echoing booms.

Only that terrain disadvantage, putting them in the low ground and therefore even more on their guard, led to what happened next.

A rock crashed to the canyon floor somewhere up ahead, sending thunderous echoes reverberating across the still badlands. Until that noise, Bannon almost hadn’t really appreciated just how quiet it really was out here. Zhogalgan had very little indigenous animal life, and most of it either stayed in the green zones around the planet’s few bodies of water or ranged far from any others of its kind, so as to avoid competing for the scarce resources in the desolate wilderness that made up most of the planet’s surface. So the sound made the entire team freeze in place. It was possible that a whisper of wind, a tiny bit of very rare seismic movement, or just the erosion of centuries had finally dislodged a rock. But Bannon didn’t think so, and neither did Summ.

“Did you hear that, sir?” Summ’s whisper was so low that his mic barely picked it up.

“Of course I did, Summ.” Bannon was at his junior squad sergeant’s elbow, his voice pitched lower than a whisper. Whispers could carry. “Every living thing within ten miles heard it.”

He scanned their surroundings, the four receptors in his helmet projecting an overlay in false color on his visor, turning the night into something close to dawn twilight. Nothing stirred, nothing moved. Something was bothering him, though, something out there that didn’t quite fit, but that he couldn’t quite identify.

He had a small picket drone in his pack. He could get it up in a couple of minutes and get a better look at the nearby terrain—and anyone or anything that might be stirring out there—but he thought better of it. The drone would make noise, and even if there weren’t otuchans within earshot, the hum of the fans would travel far in the dark.

A moment later he was immensely glad he’d made that call, as he heard movement from somewhere ahead, the crunch of gravel and another kicked rock, followed by what sounded like a voice speaking in a combination of clicks, hisses, and gutturals. The nature of the war so far meant that they’d had little direct contact with the otuchans aside from exchanges of fire, but Bannon knew their language when he heard it.

“Everyone down. Camouflage shrouds, now.”

The team spread out, finding cover where they could. The canyon floor wasn’t smooth, but there was remarkably little in the way of cover that a full-grown human with combat gear could hide behind. Fortunately they had their camouflage shrouds, adaptive cloaks that could stand up to all but close scrutiny when the man beneath stayed absolutely still.

Provided the otuchans couldn’t see farther into the spectrum than the Corvanites suspected. That was another thing intel wasn’t quite sure about. Given how long this war had dragged on, and the numerous contacts with the otuchans elsewhere in the galaxy, Bannon wondered just how that particular fact had never been determined. It was a passing thought as he lowered himself quickly but quietly into a fold in the ground where a fan of debris had fallen from the cliffs above, and spread his shroud over himself.

Not a moment too soon. The acoustics of the canyons and badlands were deceptive, and while the Corvanites’ helmets did a fairly good job of simulating direction and distance of sounds, there was still an artificiality about the feed that had to be overcome. Bannon had been sure that the otuchans had been farther away, but now here they were, less than two hundred yards away.

Part of the agoge field training involved three weeks of combat and survival exercises in the wilderness on Corvan Minor, with nothing but the most basic tools and weapons. It inculcated in the Corvanite warriors an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of their equipment—and Bannon was cursing the weaknesses at the moment.

The otuchans were moving in formation, though it wasn’t an infantry formation that Bannon was familiar with. They were staggered in an odd sort of way, but they were maintaining their distances, crude otuchan rifles in their hands, and they were alert and scanning, though with the otuchans’ eye structure, that took a different form than with humans. Their eyes were set far apart, giving them a field of view of nearly one hundred twenty degrees, so to cover their entire surroundings required only small movements of their blunt-snouted heads.

None of them were wearing armor. The otuchans were more like the Corvanites than either the native Zhogalganite humans or the Zolarians in that they only wore armor when they were expecting to conduct an assault. Here, they were wearing light-colored fatigues and belt kits. They also didn’t seem to have any of the advanced, higher-technology weapons that they’d used in the ambush outside of Berinchi Konu. All except one, who carried a blocky tube that might have been a rocket launcher—the otuchans liked their rockets and explosives. The rest carried the crude-looking but effective sheet-metal and bar-stock rifles that they’d been using since planetfall.

Bannon stayed flat and as still as possible. He didn’t know how good otuchan hearing was, but given the strange acoustics of the badlands, he couldn’t take the chance of making any noise at all. He hoped that he’d hammered that home to his men hard enough. They’d all done some reconnaissance in the past, but it wasn’t a specialization that they’d focused on exhaustively.

Corvanites didn’t tend to do “specialization.”

He held his breath as the otuchans came closer, not even daring to turn his head to check on the rest of the team. If the Corvanites had been more technologically minded, more like the Zolarians, they might have had individual transponders that he could track on his visor, but that would also mean transmitting signals in an environment where, even if the otuchans couldn’t detect them, the Zolarians could.

And perhaps the otuchans could detect the ultra-frequency signals as well. For all their viciousness in combat and their apparent unwillingness to coexist with humans, they were far from the savage primitives they were often depicted as—even by some of their own kind back on the homeworlds.

Fortunately, as the otuchans walked past, taking a slightly different branch canyon, so close that he could still hear their rasping voices even without his helmet’s audio enhancers, none of the Corvanites moved or made a sound.

Long after the enemy patrol’s voices and the scrape of their footsteps had faded into the rocks around them, the small reconnaissance team stayed in place beneath their camouflage shrouds, waiting and listening. Only after enough time had passed that Bannon was reasonably certain they weren’t about to be walked on again did he carefully sweep aside his shroud and stow it. “Everyone up.” He kept his voice low but stayed off comms. With the enemy that close, he wanted to risk no transmissions.

Once the rest of the team was on their feet, their shrouds packed away, he pointed up, onto the rocky ridgeline above them. “We can’t risk the low ground any longer. Let’s get on top. It will be slower, but that’s the only way we’re going to avoid detection.”

It was to their credit as Corvanites that none of the men, even the junior ones, groaned, complained, or even hung their heads at the prospect. They’d been trained from their teens to embrace hardship in the pursuit of their worlds’ security, and they would do so.

They began to climb.

***

The sun was beginning to rise again by the time they found a spot to set in, but Bannon already knew that they’d found what they were looking for.

At least a part of it.

The ridgeline had fallen away as if struck with a gigantic blade, allowing the badlands to open up into a vast, dusty bowl. It might have been an ancient, dry lakebed, or perhaps an impact crater; Bannon couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter.

The thousands of otuchans in that depression were what commanded his attention.

He could count at least three separate camps, each with a sizeable no man’s land around it. In some ways they resembled the Corvanite patrol base that lay behind them, complete with laagered, circled crawlers bristling with cannon and rocket launchers. The saurians milled about within the perimeters of their rough, angular vehicles, and as Bannon scanned the vista before them, trying to get at least a rough count, a pair of rare otuchan jets roared by overhead.

This was a major operation, and given the proximity to the small but growing settlement of Kizil Tas, where a sizeable Corvanite operating base had just been set up, Bannon thought he knew what the goal was.

He brought up his magnifiers as Summ crouched in the crack in the rock next to him. “How do our ships miss this?”

Bannon didn’t lower the mags. “It’s a big planet. And our ships have to contend with conflicting orbits against the Zolarians. If the turtles really are arming the otuchans, they might have set their orbits to try to keep our ships away from a good view of this.” He didn’t know enough orbital dynamics to be sure whether or not that would actually work. He was an infantryman, not a spacer. It made sense to him, though.

As he watched, a small crawler broke out of one of the otuchan perimeters and started toward the center of the bowl. Two more followed, then another came from a different camp. It looked like there was a conference or talk about to happen. He tapped a control on the magnifiers, and they started to record. Whatever happened next, it was quite likely to be important enough that Captain Haarot would want to see it.

The crawlers approached each other, halting about fifty meters or so apart. Two had cannons mounted, while the third had a rocket launcher. All of the weapons were pointed at the other crawlers. Interesting. Maybe the otuchans aren’t as monolithic as we thought they were. Is this some rivalry at work that we don’t know about?

It wasn’t intellectual curiosity that drove his questions. He was wondering how to use this information against the otuchans. And maybe the Zolarians along the way, since he was pretty sure that the turtles were keeping the reptilian aliens at the humans’ throats.

The crawlers held their fire as the small figures of otuchans got out and advanced toward the opening between the vehicles. Bannon zoomed in, his eyes narrowing as he observed that these three otuchans appeared to be slightly larger than the rest of their entourages. He knew that the diaspora otuchans supposedly subscribed to an extreme “survival of the fittest” philosophy. Did that extend to their leadership?

Tapping another control, he triggered the magnifiers’ analysis module, which should be able to reconstruct most of the speech between the otuchans down there. The translator in his helmet would take care of the rest.

“…doing here, Ishshkah?” The voice came through the translator as a flat, harsh, slightly buzzing sound. “Your phratry is still too small to challenge for leadership.”

“Numbers are not the final factor.” There was no differentiation in the sound of the translated voice, so Bannon couldn’t determine which of the otuchans below was speaking. “But since Ekshnaz will not speak of the source of his weapons, I believe we must force the issue.” There was a pause, but none of the other otuchans—as far as Bannon could tell—added any comment. “The humans provide enough of a challenge for now. Are we truly fit, truly on the road to the next step in our race’s progress, if we tear at each other so much that the humans may dominate or eliminate us?” Another pause. Even with the magnifiers, Bannon was still too far away to tell which one was speaking, either by body language or tone. “This is the time when we must consider all the factors, and place the survival of the otuchan race above our personal standing.”

There was a harsh rasp that might have been laughter. “You speak as if the two were not intertwined, Ishshkah. If we are not honing our strength within, how can we pit ourselves against humans who have starships at their beck and call?”

“Fighting among ourselves, keeping advantages from our fellow otuchans, is not ‘honing’ our strength, Jagkhshah. It weakens us, and it makes it inevitable that the humans will inherit this world.”

Bannon was listening, wishing that he could tell which of those chieftains down there—if the otuchans even used the word or had the concept—was Ishshkah. Or any of the others. If they could capture or kill one of the stronger otuchans, it could have devastating ripples on the rest of their fighters.

If.

“Find the tripod,” he told Summ. He kept the magnifiers trained on the meeting down in the bowl, but this might take a while, and he couldn’t necessarily hold them steady long enough.

In the meantime, he began to plan a route that would get them close enough to launch a raid, once they’d sent the microburst transmission to the Thunderer in orbit.

CHAPTER 9

The farther north the column went, the more Draven began to suspect that this mission had nothing to do with monitoring the Corvanites’ reconnaissance missions that were supposedly moving deeper and deeper into no man’s land, toward otuchan territory. Despite Captain Thill’s insistence that General Pleimelding had personally instructed his field commanders to take steps to keep the warmongering Corvanites from escalating the situation by attacking the otuchans outright, they’d seen no sign whatsoever of the Corvanites in three days, aside from the occasional moving speck of light overhead that was one or another of their starships.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have bothered him so much. He had no love for the Corvanites, with their militarization of every facet of their society, trying to imitate the Spartans of old Earth and lumping anyone not as militant as they in with the transhumanist zealots of Newland or the Dawning Epoch Movement. Age and experience might have made him a cynic, but deep down he really believed in the principles the Grand Democracy had been founded on. Disdaining all art, philosophy, and culture in favor of the pursuit of the art of war led to the question of what any of that art of war was really worth.

But when the command started feeding the troops pure toro-tig droppings, then Draven started to get annoyed. Because it almost always turned out to be officer politics rearing its ugly head.

Not that there weren’t politics to be considered at all times among all Zolarians. The cost of not living within a strict military hierarchy like the Corvanites was that every Zolarian of voting age had to take politics into consideration with every decision he or she ever made. But officer politics reached a whole different level. Men and women became officers because they had sponsors high within the supposedly nonexistent upper echelons of Zolarian society, and everything they did was calculated to jockey for a higher position in those circles.

So what was Captain Thill up to out here, where there didn’t appear to be any Corvanites?

Draven could ask, but as he rode in the command blower’s hatch, turned out once again, he knew that it would be futile. Thill would just make another vague comment about Corvanite maneuvers, like he had the last few times, and Draven would be no closer to an answer as to what exactly they were doing way out on the Karangy Ustel plateau, almost four days’ constant travel away from their own lines.

He glowered at the horizon, uncomfortably aware that they’d come far enough north that he could now see the polar ice cap, even if it was still quite some distance away, a thin, bluish line on the horizon, brighter than it might have otherwise been on a planet with higher gravity and a denser atmosphere. He did have to hand it to the Corvanites—they’d taken steps to acclimate themselves to Zhogalgan’s atmosphere, while the Zolarians had stayed in their hardsuits as much for the sake of having thicker air to breathe as to address the Grand Democracy’s movers and shakers’ worries about casualties.

As he stared, more lost in dark thoughts about what sort of position-minded games he and his company—it wasn’t Captain Thill’s company, not really—had been roped into, he saw a spark rising above the horizon in the distance, just above the point they seemed to be bound for. It was joined a moment later by a second spark, both soon resolvable as heavy lift shuttles rising toward the sky on pillars of fire.

That was strange, and his frown deepened as the distant teardrop shapes climbed, their drive flares trailing long pillars of smoke and condensation.

There’s no base out there. We’re already over a thousand kilometers away from the outer edges of Zhogalganite settlements. No humans have come out this far since the Kotszebue crashed.

The answer was there, in the shape of the heavy lift shuttles, the distance from the Zhogalganite cities, and the secrecy of the mission. He could feel it in his gut, and he viciously quashed the sick feeling that came with the realization. No. That can’t be it. We didn’t play right into Corvanite propagandist hands.

Not that the Corvanites were subtle enough for truly effective propaganda. The Zolarians beat them at it at every turn. Or at least, he liked to think so. Still, the locals seemed to prefer the Corvanites to the Zolarians, despite months of information campaigns designed to convince them that peaceful coexistence was the best option for everyone on Zhogalgan, human and otuchan.

Draven couldn’t ignore the fact that those ships looked very much like Drayman-class heavy lift shuttles. Zolarian Drayman-class heavy lift shuttles. Lifting from a point on the planet where no Corvanites or Zhogalganites should be found.

Maybe it’s something else. He turned in, dropping back down into the command blower’s troop compartment, and activated the hatch above him, which irised closed with a hiss. He didn’t want to stare at those craft and try to work out the possibilities. He was too tired, too far into the operation, and he already knew he couldn’t ask Captain Thill and get a straight answer.

He’d just have to be patient and wait to see what developed.

***

They were still almost a day’s drive, give or take a few hours, from where Draven had calculated the launch point for the shuttles had been, when Captain Thill called a halt. There was no evident reason to stop when and where they did. The sun wouldn’t be down for another four hours, and they were out in the open. The surface of the vast northern plateau was as flat as it could be without artificial means for as far as the eye could see, with no signs of life or threats anywhere within line of sight. But the captain wanted to stop, so they stopped, each platoon forming its own small perimeter in a square with the command blower, the drone section, and the three logistics and support blowers in the center.

“Let me get all officers at the command blower.” Captain Thill sounded distracted over the comm.

Draven had turned out again and stayed where he was. Ordinarily he’d already be on the ground, making the rounds to the platoons and checking on his sergeants first class and second class, but at the moment he had no intention of going anywhere. He needed to hear this, if only to put his own mind somewhat at rest.

Of course, there was no reason to expect that Captain Thill wouldn’t spin a dishonest story for the platoon leaders. If this operation really was crooked, he certainly wouldn’t come right out and say it. The people back on Zolah and its satellite worlds wouldn’t necessarily care about dead Corvanites—or Zhogalganites, if he was being honest—but they could easily be made to care about secrets and hypocrisy. And from what he’d seen already, Draven wouldn’t put it past any of these officers to eagerly grasp at a political knife they could drive into Captain Thill’s back.

This was one of those times when Draven envied some of the other militaries he’d been around, where officers were expected to at least lead, rather than throw around commands and jockey with each other for who got the next promotion and billet. Maybe he was simply getting old and tired, lending a glow to other worlds’ armies that didn’t actually exist, but he was increasingly disgusted with the behavior of ninety percent of the “democratically elected” leadership of his own forces.

Naturally, it took longer than it should have for the lieutenants to gather at the command blower. Over time, Draven had come to understand that this was probably why Captain Thill never seemed to quite specify a timeline for his instructions. If he did, and his subordinates consistently didn’t meet it, then that might reflect poorly on him. Which could affect his political aspirations down the line.

Draven made no sound or movement that might draw notice. He was nothing but another hardsuit in the hatch. Could be a private, could be a statue. As long as he didn’t draw attention to himself, Captain Thill would ignore him.

It was a little depressing, just how easily he could play the captain’s arrogance against him.

“All right. Everyone here?” Thill had strolled down the ramp of the grounded blower, the battered, scarred skirts resting on the dusty ground, flattening the low carpet of grayish lichen-like plants. Draven was sure that the captain would suggest that the skirts be repainted soon, but he hoped he could fend that off until they got back to the rear.

It took a moment for him to confirm that the twelve lieutenants, from third to first class, were all there. How do we need twelve of them? Draven stared at the horizon and kept the thought to himself.

There was little to see, little to read in the crescent of officers gathered around the back ramp. Since they were outside the safe areas, the mandate to keep helmets on outside of the vehicles meant that none were showing their faces. They were all nearly identical hardsuited figures, only of slightly different heights and builds, staring with blank faceplates at the captain’s own blank faceplate.

“You’re probably wondering just what we’re really doing out here. My orders were sealed by General Pleimelding himself.” Draven found that highly doubtful. “While it may seem outlandish, it turns out the Corvanites were at least partially correct in their recent accusations.”

That prompted a stir among the gathered officers, though it seemed to Draven they were more affronted than shocked. He suspected that anyone with a brain had to have already reached the same conclusion after the weapons they’d found in Az Ku, not to mention the orders to secure them all.

“Since the Corvanites have decided to wage war on the otuchans instead of trying to keep the peace, someone in command has begun to take steps to try to balance the situation out.” That was an interesting way of putting it, given the massacres that the otuchans had already committed both before and after the peacekeeping forces had arrived on and above Zhogalgan. “Unfortunately, the Corvanites have already found out about these possibly ill-advised efforts to aid the otuchan natives in their self-determination and resistance to aggression, and they are now making open threats in the diplomatic quarter of Berinchi Konu. As a result, and in the interests of interstellar peace, we have been instructed to shut the operation down, by none other than the general himself.”

Draven’s eyes narrowed, though he didn’t turn his head or otherwise give any indication that he’d heard. “Shutting the operation down” could mean any number of things, coming from Captain Thill. I hope the poor dumb bastards who were running guns to the otuchans all got off-planet with those two heavy haulers.

He also hoped that the otuchans weren’t on site, ready to pick up more guns, lasers, and explosives. That could get… interesting.

“Do I understand that correctly, sir?” Lieutenant Hask always spoke with an aggravating cross between smugness and prim, fake inquisitiveness. “We’re supposed to secure the weapons, or destroy them and any evidence of our involvement? Since we’re so worried about Corvanite sensibilities?”

Thill turned to face Hask, his expression unreadable behind his visor, but his posture stiffening enough to communicate that he knew full well what Hask was getting at, and he didn’t appreciate it. “We are to secure the entire operation and get any trace of it off-world, Lieutenant Hask. I have a plan to that end, and all I will require of you is your instant and willing obedience to my orders going forward. I am informing you of the actual goal of this mission because it is time that you knew, and there will not be time for questions once we arrive at the objective.” He looked around at his junior officers, managing to appear imperious just by his body language in the hardsuit. “This should be fairly straightforward. Secrecy was the key to this operation, not heavy defense, so I am expecting no resistance. I don’t even expect anyone to be there.” He pointed toward the sky. “The smugglers should have taken off hours ago, so this should be a simple secure and destroy operation on a weapons cache.”

None of the lieutenants seemed to want to comment, but Draven felt like rolling his eyes. He’d heard that song before.

He largely tuned out the rest of the brief. As was typical with Captain Thill, it was long on slogans and buzzwords, and short on practicalities. The latter was always left up to the noncoms, and Draven was already working on that in his head. He had to wait until Thill was done before he could gather his own junior leaders and get them working on the problem too.

As Thill droned on behind him, Draven watched the perimeter and thought.

***

Draven looked around at his platoon sergeants, gathered around the side of Sergeant First Class Al Tabaq’s blower. In accordance with General Pleimelding’s mandate, they were all wearing their helmets, so he could identify each man or woman only by stature and insignia on their hardsuits. The faceplates were all tinted, hiding faces behind uniform blank slates.

Those blank slates were turned toward him in silence now. He’d just finished briefing them. Not with any of the editorial commentary that had been playing in his head. Al Tabaq, Ferrier, and Coulson would furnish that for themselves. His three senior platoon sergeants tended to have pretty good heads on their shoulders, even if Coulson could be almost as much of a bastard to his subordinates as Thill. They all had experience and knew what needed to get done.

They also wouldn’t ask uncomfortable questions. The reality of being a noncom in the Grand Army of Zolah meant keeping one’s thoughts to oneself unless one could be very certain that all the officers were out of earshot.

The other two were question marks. Even after all the time they’d spent on Zhogalgan, Draven was still working on Akiwe and Yusuko.

“How sure are we that this cache is going to be undefended?” Akiwe had been promoted just before they’d made planetfall on Zhogalgan, but he still acted like he was brand new and out of his depth, including asking questions that had no answers—or answers that couldn’t be voiced. “If we really are talking about smugglers, won’t they take steps to secure their cargo?”

Who says they’re smugglers? Draven kept that thought to himself. “That is the word we’ve gotten from command. We will, of course, take precautions as we get closer, but we have little reason to expect any resistance on site.” He stared at Akiwe as he spoke, as if he could burn the intent behind his words directly into the platoon sergeant’s brain by the sheer intensity of his gaze. Of course we’re going to be ready for a fight. Why else would we have brought a company out here?

He turned his eyes on Yusuko. Despite the facelessness of their helmets, he could still almost see her pinched, disapproving facial expression. It didn’t matter what she disapproved of, Yusuko always had something to say, it was rarely useful, and she rarely did much about any of it, either. She was the sort of leader who preferred to lead from her blower, even when dismounts were out—and needed to be out. Draven would have done something about that a long time ago, except that judging by her fitness scores, she probably kept up better on the blower than she ever would on foot.

He was waiting for her inevitable input, and she didn’t disappoint. “If the captain says there should be no resistance, why are we going to take the time to act as if there will be? Why not just get in, do the job, and get out?” She folded her arms, skating on the very edge of insubordination. But since she was technically defending Captain Thill’s assessment, Draven would have a hard time coming down on her for talking back, and she knew it.

“Because it’s standard operating procedure, Sergeant Yusuko, and we’re a long way from support. So we’re going to be cautious.” Despite what she thought was her political top cover, Draven’s harsh reply brooked no argument. “Now make sure your platoons are wired tight, your blowers are ready for another long movement, and stand by for the order to move.”

CHAPTER 10

The sun hadn’t been down that long, but Bannon wanted as much darkness as possible to cover their next move. The night lasted only about ten hours at this latitude, and while it was apparent from observation that the otuchans had some way to see better in the dark than humans, either technological or organic, they still hadn’t detected the recon team in the dark under their camouflage shrouds. Regardless, Bannon was determined to use every advantage he might have. If this raid was going to work against the disparity in numbers they were looking at, he’d have to.

He was right beside Hern, who wouldn’t let his commanding officer take point. For the moment, Bannon would stand for it, but when it came time, he knew where he needed to be.

That was why he was with Hern’s squad, crawling over the lip of the bowl, heading for one of the otuchan camps, instead of back with the crawlers, prepping the diversionary attack on the other side of the depression.

This was going to be tricky, and he’d considered simply attempting a fast, spearhead strike directly at the target camp. In and out. These were otuchans, however, and while they might not be on the same technological level as the humans on Zhogalgan, they weren’t dumb. Nor were they given to panic. They’d pursue, and it would probably be all of them. Getting clear would be a nightmare, if it was doable at all. So he’d needed to take the risk that the otuchans might pick up his transmissions. He needed support. He’d only finished coordinating with the Thunderer and the Relentless a few hours before.

Now, as he moved quickly to a fold in the ground where a part of the rim of the bowl had crumbled away, leading to a fan of dirt and scree pointing toward the nearest otuchan camp, he checked his chrono, displayed in a muted set of numbers high up on his visor. He gritted his teeth as he got low in the crack in the rock and dirt. They were behind. He could still do some coordination once their support was on station, but the less electronic noise out there for the otuchans to pick up on, the better.

Hern’s boot slipped as he took up a position on the other side of the little saddle, and a small cascade of dirt and rocks tumbled down the slope, raising a minuscule cloud of dust. Every Corvanite on that hillside froze, weapons coming up as they waited for the alarm to be sounded.

Below them, the angular otuchan crawlers, with their odd numbers of wheels, sat dark and quiet, arranged in a rough trapezoid. The otuchans seemed to prefer angular perimeters as opposed to the humans’ circles. Bannon didn’t know why. He’d just noticed it. There had been enough time spent over the last day watching the otuchans to make some interesting observations.

Three more phratries had arrived in the bowl over the previous day, some with more advanced vehicles and weapons than others. The air patrols overhead had gotten more frequent as well, both piston engines and jets. The aircraft had disappeared at sundown, so Bannon hoped that whatever rudimentary night-vision the otuchans possessed wasn’t widespread enough or good enough for their pilots. Because being out on that slope, he felt more exposed than he ever wanted to be.

And they were pretty sure the camp they were headed for had Zolarian weapons.

Well, human weapons. Officially, Intelligence hadn’t confirmed where the weapons had come from, but Bannon knew there weren’t that many suspects in the system, let alone on the planet.

He crouched in his meager cover and watched and listened. Those crawlers were dark and quiet, the otuchans either sleeping underneath or inside them, but that didn’t mean they were unmanned. He’d watched his adversaries conduct a constant security rotation throughout the day—even though it had been primarily concerned with the other phratries; that there was no love lost between otuchan families was abundantly obvious—and he had no doubt that not only were there otuchans at the controls of those cannons and rocket launchers, they were awake and alert.

After enough time passed, he felt sure his squad hadn’t been detected. It was looking more and more like the weapons shipments had contained weapons, ammunition, and power packs, but not optics. That stood to reason, since even the weapons had to be altered for otuchan physiology, and altering optics for different eyes was more difficult. He got back to his feet, carefully, and recommenced his advance.

Hern was right behind him, with Adamas almost missing the fact he was supposed to be moving until his phalanx leader was almost abreast of him. The younger private fortunately had the presence of mind to get up in a controlled manner as he continued his climb toward the floor of the bowl, rather than scramble and make noise.

The squad spread out as they descended, moving slowly and carefully from cover to cover, at least as much as they could find on that slope. There was enough erosion that there were plenty of gullies running down toward the bottom of the depression, but the Corvanite warriors occasionally had to wedge themselves into uncomfortably tight cracks in the ground to truly disappear into the landscape.

Bannon had been aiming for a boulder that had rolled about two-thirds of the way down the slope from the top rim. He reached it, checking overhead and once more glancing at the chrono display on the inside of his visor. Support would be in position within another ten minutes. Cutting it close, but we’re in position. He checked to either side, picking out, with some difficulty, the rest of the squad as they got into covered and concealed spots to overwatch the otuchan camp, hopefully in such a way that they could get up and move quickly.

Now they just had to wait.

He saw movement below, and quickly zoomed in on it. Anything could go wrong at this point, and in his experience, it often did. The fact that the otuchans hadn’t had security up on the rim had been a stroke of good fortune, though he was reasonably sure that they hadn’t done so only because a perceived advantage might have triggered a fight with one of the other phratries. Especially since this particular group appeared to be the one most equipped with the more advanced weapons.

Five minutes. And now the otuchans were moving. Heavy weapons were being passed out from one of the bigger crawlers, otuchan-designed rocket launchers and what appeared to be human-designed autoguns and combat lasers. Bannon tensed, ready to launch the attack if it looked like they were about to get hit. They had good positioning and good cover, but they were outnumbered and vastly outgunned.

It soon became clear, though, that the otuchans weren’t staging an attack on the Corvanite squad hunkered down just outside their perimeter. The otuchans were instead moving to the opposite side of the formation of parked crawlers, facing toward one of the other phratries.

Moving very carefully so as to avoid giving himself away by movement, Bannon pulled out his magnifiers and scanned the bottom of the depression. A small raiding party of otuchans was moving around another phratry’s encampment, staying low and spread out, creeping toward the perimeter that he and his men were already closing in on. Given the conversation he’d monitored earlier, he suspected that some of the otuchans weren’t terribly happy about the distribution of the advanced weapons and were looking to grab some for themselves.

That might present just the kind of chaos and confusion that he needed, without the need for the diversionary strikes. Still, Bannon—like most Corvanites—wasn’t inclined to pass up an opportunity to hurt the enemy even more.

One minute. A voice crackled in his ear. “One Zero Two Three, Blackfeather Lead. Thirty seconds. Call targets.”

There were ways to read out a full call for fire, but that was somewhat less precise than a direct link via battle plate with coordinates sent directly to the fighters’ heads-up displays. He might have still tried to keep his transmissions minimal if all hell wasn’t about to rain down from the sky. So he linked the wrist display—blank to the naked eye in the dark, but visible through his visor—and tapped in the target coordinates of one of the camps on the far side of the valley.

He knew the Dragon 27 starfighters would have made atmospheric entry as close to the far side of the planet as possible, to keep the fiery plumes of their plunge into the atmosphere below the horizon from their targets. From there, they would have stayed low, slowing to supersonic speeds as they tracked around the planet, until they were coming over the horizon ahead of their own shock waves, just high enough to get targeting data from hundreds of miles away.

And now they were already in range as soon as they cleared the horizon.

In Bannon’s visor, the dot where he’d tagged the otuchan target flashed once. “Tally target. Stand by. I suggest you keep your heads down.” The pilots were Corvanites, but something about pilots always seemed much more loose and laid back to Bannon, no matter what world they came from.

The first missiles streaked overhead, moving so fast that they seemed almost to glow just from friction, and the thunder of their shock waves slapped at the Corvanites on the hillside as they flashed overhead to slam into one of the far encampments with twin flashes, sun-bright for an instant before the ground heaved and blossomed skyward, throwing bits of rock, otuchans, and equipment toward the stars above.

A second volley of missiles hammered the second target point, the flashes lighting up the night as if a twin sunrise had briefly appeared in the badlands, completely tearing apart half a dozen vehicles before the shock waves flattened still more and the debris that had once been otuchans and their machines began to patter down out of the sky.

Calling that sort of fire from above had been rare in most of the planetary deployments that Bannon had seen over the last few years. Gunship strikes were far more common, but this encampment was beyond the range of gunships, so instead he’d brought in this awesome display of spaceborne firepower that would have most men staring in shock and awe. Those warheads had obliterated two of the phratries’ camps. Not just done damage. They were gone. A handful of burning, twisted metal along the edges of the craters was all that was left of the otuchan crawlers.

His squad was already up and moving, plummeting down the slope in long bounds, guns up and looking for targets. These men were Corvanites. Death comes, and they go and meet it.

The starfighters passed overhead, low and fast, their sonic booms rocking vehicles and hammering at the equilibrium of living beings. Sharp-edged arrowheads flashed past and the shock waves blew tunnels in the towering columns of smoke and dust from the strikes. The impact of the missile strikes and the low, supersonic pass had the desired effect, though even faced with such overwhelming force, a couple of the otuchans’ mounted cannons swiveled to try to follow the starfighters, visible now only as tiny, actinic points of flame as they streaked away before breaking to come around for a second pass if necessary.

By that time, the Corvanites on the ground were nearly at the perimeter. The shock and the light of the starfighter strikes had been devastating enough that the movement of eleven men across an otherwise barren slope had gone unnoticed. The otuchans were better warriors than many humans gave them credit for, but the strikes had been so unexpected that Bannon couldn’t blame them for looking the wrong way.

They recovered quickly, however. The cannon on the nearest crawler was already starting to move their way when Hern paused, dropped to a knee, and launched a grenade at it.

The thirty-seven-millimeter grenade launcher was a versatile weapon, capable of launching anything from simple high-explosive warheads to heat-seeking, self-propelled mini-missiles. He’d selected armor-piercing thermobarics for this.

The warhead struck the crawler just below its armored glass viewport, punching through the glacis with a flash just before fire blossomed from every port, seam, and hatch in the vehicle. The turret detonated, throwing what was left of the cannon into the cloud of settling dust and smoke that already hung over the valley like a pall.

Bannon had kept moving, angling to put some distance between him and the target crawler now belching white-hot sheets of flame. As he came around the burning hulk of the crawler, now inside the perimeter, he spotted three otuchans reeling from the wave of heat carried by the muted shock wave from the stricken five-wheeler. They grabbed for weapons, and a glance confirmed that they were the same sleek, synthetic-and-titanosteel weapons that the Corvanites had taken off the dead otuchans in the ambush on the way to Az Ku.

Bannon put his sights on the nearest crocodilian alien and dropped him with a trio of six-millimeter shots to the upper chest. None of the otuchans had donned their armor plates, and while they were tough, they weren’t tough enough to stand up to multiple six-millimeter rounds. The otuchan staggered, trying valiantly to stay on his feet for a moment, before toppling to the dust.

The squad spread out on either side of the burning wreck, appearing like specters out of the flames to the handful of otuchans who only now realized that they were under attack from more than one direction. A crackling storm of gunfire ripped through those otuchans who had started to respond to the new attack, even as Corvanite warriors rushed to take cover behind the massive wheels of more than one otuchan crawler.

In the cacophony of gunfire and explosions—Hern was still lobbing grenades at crawlers as he moved—Bannon couldn’t hear the diversionary attack, halfway around the valley, but he saw a single indicator pop up in his visor telling him that Sergeant Killian had launched the assault with the rest of the phalanx, pouring rifle and heavy weapons fire into the otuchan flanks and drawing as much attention—and fire—as possible.

Bannon got up and moved, charging toward another five-wheeled crawler closer to the center of the encampment, though it was still near enough to the perimeter to be able to engage any attackers coming from one of the other phratries’ encampments. If the alpha—or whatever the designation for an otuchan leader was—was anywhere, he was probably going to be there.

Bannon dropped two more otuchans as he moved, pivoting from one to the other between shots, keeping both off balance with the impacts until they went down, their dark blood spilling out into the dust, one still gnashing its toothy maw as it tried desperately to bring its rifle to bear for one last shot.

The Corvanites were moving fast enough, and the sound and fury of the fight was disorienting enough, that the otuchans’ hard-wired tendency to try to make every shot count was actively working against them. Bannon felt more than heard a bullet snap past his helmet, just after he’d changed directions to run to a stack of cargo containers that had been unloaded from one of the crawlers. He knelt there for just a moment, tracking in on another otuchan that was drawing a bead on Trent. The squad autogunner was raking a cluster of otuchans who had taken cover behind one of the three-wheeled crawlers with fire, keeping them pinned down. Bannon dropped the otuchan with a single round to the skull, just behind its massive jaws, and then he was up and moving again.

He reached the big crawler just ahead of Corporal Lewiski, and the two of them paused only long enough for the assistant squad leader to give his phalanx commander a tap before they drove up the ramp, weapons leveled, looking for targets.

The interior of the crawler was cramped, despite its large size. Cases of machinery, weapons, and supplies lined the walls, with seats wedged between the stacks. Those seats were empty at the moment, and at first glance the crawler appeared to be entirely deserted apart from the gunner, who was crouched in a basket beneath the rocket launcher mounted on the roof, already rotating it toward the attacking Corvanites.

Bannon shot that otuchan several times in the legs and pelvis until he collapsed with a rattling hiss, at which point both Bannon and Lewiski silenced him with a trio of shots apiece.

Then the big one came out of the driver’s compartment.

This otuchan stood nearly six and a half feet tall, a head taller than any of the others that Bannon had yet encountered, and he was wider than the others, too. Bannon realized, as the monster of an alien barged out of the driver’s compartment, wielding a big-bore otuchan pistol that looked like it had been constructed from a sewer pipe, that he’d never seen one of their leaders up close.

The otuchan checked his rush as he stared at the two leveled six-millimeter rifles. Big though he may be, tough though he may be, he knew that one or the other Corvanite—if not both—was going to shoot him before he could get more than one hasty shot off.

For a moment, Bannon thought the otuchan was going to go for it. If they really did assign leadership based on size and toughness, then he could see it happening. This one, however, held up one clawed, empty hand, and slowly lowered his pistol to the deck.

Bannon couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. An otuchan surrendering? Still, he’d never seen one stand and fight to the death, either. Their primary tactic was hit and fade, even when perpetrating massacres on border settlements.

The gunfire was starting to die down outside, though the crackle of flames was loud enough, even inside the crawler, that Bannon was pretty sure that Hern had used the last of his AP thermobaric grenades on as many crawlers as possible.

“Get some restraints on him.”

Bannon kept the otuchan covered as Lewiski moved forward, taking the heavy-duty flex cuffs out of his gear. Bannon didn’t take his eyes or his muzzle away from the big alien for a second, knowing that even after Lewiski had kicked away the big pistol, that creature’s talons and teeth would be more than sufficient to kill a human in close combat.

Lewiski quickly cuffed the otuchan and hauled him to his feet. Despite the size and weight of the alien, Lewiski was a strong kid, and the otuchan wasn’t fighting him. That was strange, but Bannon wasn’t going to worry about it too much at the moment, except to keep his eyes open for an ambush. The otuchans were good at those, and he was sure that those cold, predatory eyes were watching for any opening.

He stepped aside to give Lewiski room to drag the otuchan past him. The reptilian scanned him as he went past, even as Bannon pulled his rifle back to a retention position from which he could easily kill the otuchan without giving it much room to knock the weapon aside before he squeezed the trigger. The big alien noticed, too. His split-pupil eyes flicked down to the weapon, then back up to Bannon’s visor. Bannon knew little about reading otuchan expressions, but he could have sworn the creature smiled.

Pushing out onto the ground, they stepped out into the otuchan perimeter, now obscured by smoke, fire, and dust, muzzle flashes still flickering around the last couple of crawlers as the remaining otuchans tried to fight off their attackers. Bannon keyed his comm. “Fall back to Rally Point Sierra!” He kept a hand on Lewiski’s shoulder, propelling the corporal toward the gap between two burning crawlers that were still belching flame and black smoke into the night. They had the package. They needed to get clear as quickly as possible.

They ran out into the dark, their pace slowing slightly as they hit the slope. On either flank, the rest of the squad was bounding back in pairs.

Most of the squad, anyway. He saw at least two carrying their comrades over their shoulders. Despite overwhelming force and surprise, they’d still lost two.

They had gone to meet death, as every Corvanite warrior expects to.

About fifty yards outside the perimeter Bannon stopped, dropping to a knee within one of the gullies that split the hillside. “Keep going.” He leveled his rifle and searched for targets as two more pairs of his men ran past, struggling for their footing on the steepening slope.

Trent threw himself down in a depression just off to Bannon’s right, dropping his autogun onto its bipods and snugging the buttstock into his shoulder. With a roar, he opened fire again, sweeping a stream of six-millimeter bullets across the edge of the perimeter. From where he crouched, Bannon couldn’t see much in the way of targets, but Trent was doing his job, discouraging pursuit and forcing as many otuchans as possible to keep their heads down lest they get them blown off.

The otuchans weren’t pursuing. That was interesting, though at the moment, Bannon only took note of it because he didn’t have anything to shoot at other than those crackling infernos that had once been crawlers, shaken once again by a renewed pair of supersonic thunderclaps as the Dragon 27s made another pass.

He could already hear the crackling thunder of drop shuttle engines on final approach, the heavy-duty rockets vibrating through the ground and the air, their point defenses raking the otuchan positions with laser fire, tracking glowing, sparking lines of molten rock and steam explosions across the valley. Their pickup was already here—right on time.

“Lieutenant! We’re in position!” Hern was at the rim of the crater, firing over Trent’s head at movement that Bannon couldn’t see.

This wasn’t the time or the place to stand and try to kill more otuchans. He could already sense those groups that hadn’t been directly attacked by the starfighters or the ground elements maneuvering, trying to get a shot at the Corvanites. Some ground fire was still chasing the starfighters, but the otuchans’ native-built equipment wasn’t up to the task.

He got up, grabbed Trent by the load-bearing gear, and propelled the younger man to his feet. “Move!” Corvanite officers were expected to be the first ones into combat, which also meant they were to be the last out. That meant he could not, would not, leave Trent to cover him while he climbed out of the bowl.

Trent knew better than to argue, though Bannon could feel the big man’s urge to continue to lay waste to everything in sight. He hefted the autogun and started to forge his way up the slope as the rest of the squad opened fire along the rim, trying to keep the otuchan heads down.

A bullet smacked into the dirt near Bannon’s boot. Some of the otuchans back there, though they weren’t in pursuit, were nevertheless trying to kill at least a few of the human attackers as they retreated. The shot was answered by a storm of six-millimeter fire, and then Bannon and Trent were at the rim and going over, the terrain cutting off the aliens’ fields of fire.

The drop shuttles, massive truncated cones, squatted on their landing jacks, their point defense cannons unshrouded and tracking along the top of the rim. Most of the squad was already nearly at the closest one, and their crawler was approaching from the south. The drop shuttle’s main ramp was open, the crew waiting with their tiedowns poised to secure the crawler as soon as it was aboard. Dust rose to the north, where the rest of the phalanx had broken contact and were now moving to rendezvous with the shuttles in their crawlers.

One of the drop shuttles’ point defense lasers pulsed overhead with an audible snap, the beam tracing a faint, ghostly line of glowing, superheated air as something or someone at the rim of the crater exploded. Maybe one of the otuchans had gotten more aggressive upon seeing their leader getting dragged away by a bunch of humans and had tried to give chase.

Covered by the shuttles’ gunners, Bannon and Trent put on the speed and ran for the ramps. The crawlers beat them to it, but Bannon stayed on the ground, on a knee next to the ramp, until he felt Killian’s hand on his shoulder. “Everyone’s aboard, sir.”

It would be Killian, rather than Ollan. There would come a time to correct that, but it wasn’t right at the moment.

He got up, scanned the smoke-wreathed rim of the crater once more, underlit by the fires raging on the other side of the ridge, and ran up the ramp, then up the ladder to the second deck above the crawler deck, heading for an acceleration couch as the ramps closed behind him. He’d barely strapped himself in before the engines rumbled back up to full power and the G forces began to press him down into the cushions.

Across from him, the captured otuchan was strapped down in another couch, staring at the overhead without blinking.

Mission accomplished.

CHAPTER 11

The blowers spread out in a line as they approached the low mesa that was supposed to be their target.

Draven was still riding with his head out of the hatch, ostensibly because of his urge to be able to see with his own eyes. Captain Thill had pointed out that his magnifiers were no different than the displays inside the command blower, and he was right, but Draven couldn’t admit to the captain that his real reason for riding out of the hatch was that he simply didn’t want to be cooped up with his superior officer any more than necessary.

Especially not on this mission.

He still couldn’t quite put his finger on why he thought this was so off. He had little love for the Zhogalganites, and less for the Corvanites, but something about weaponizing the otuchans against other humans, all while making the usual idealistic noises about peace and democracy, had gone too far.

He shook his head. He had orders and a mission. He was a noncom. It wasn’t his place to figure it all out and judge whether they were being righteous or not.

That’s a dodge, and you know it.

He tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head. Zolarians accepted the wisdom of the crowd as dogma, and the officers were elected to carry out that “wisdom.” It was far easier to just accept the mission and get it done than to worry too much about why it was the mission in the first place. But Draven had been around, and in the Grand Army, for long enough to have seen the demagoguery, to witness the “wisdom of the crowd” turn into whatever certain people with enough money and reach could convince enough other people to believe.

The line of blowers came over the rise, and Draven felt his eyebrows go up inside his helmet. This was a larger installation than he’d expected.

Two large landing pads stood in the center of a cluster of pre-fabs and orbital drop containers. There were at least two dozen structures, surrounded by a fence and what looked like automated defense emplacements.

Those defense emplacements gave him pause. They didn’t look Zolarian. The Grand Fleet and Grand Army had adopted the Model T-15 automated defense drones several thousand hours ago, and these segmented domes weren’t T-15s. If the elements in command who had set this up had been determined to maintain deniability, those defenses might or might not have been set up to recognize and avoid engaging Zolarian forces. And there was a good kilometer of open ground between the rise where the blowers were now halted and those turrets.

That’s spitting distance. If they were going to shoot at us, they would have already. It still didn’t alleviate his nerves.

Captain Thill’s command to advance came as a text message projected on Draven’s faceplate. The captain didn’t like speaking to the whole company when he could avoid it. With a renewed howl of lift fans, the blowers rose and started to glide down the hill, dust billowing into the sky in their wake.

As they closed in on the installation, the defense emplacements remained dormant, and Draven started to breathe a little more easily. It was still possible that they had been programmed with a much shorter than normal engagement threshold, just to ensure that they hit an intruding force with maximum casualties, but when they reached the gate, the domes were still quiescent.

The lead blowers drifted toward the gates, which remained closed. After a moment, Draven lowered himself into the main compartment with a sigh. “Sir? Are we going to breach the gates or do we have another way in?”

Thill was staring at the holo display. He looked up with a “Hmm?” and then seemed to start. “Oh. Yes. Stand by.” He tapped a couple of controls, then returned his attention to the holo. Draven couldn’t quite make out what was displayed, but he knew it wasn’t their immediate surroundings.

With a frown, Draven climbed back out of the hatch in time to see the gates swinging open. Apparently command had all the control codes for this “illegal operation.”

That was what Thill had been calling it for most of the last day. An “illegal operation.” As if to distance the Grand Army and the Grand Democracy from the reality of what they were doing here.

Draven grimaced as the blowers glided into the installation. He didn’t have a problem with arming one side or another in a local conflict. They’d done it successfully on Jasi, using weapons and logistical support to end the Dawning Epoch infiltration there without becoming directly involved and therefore becoming the transhumanist movement’s next targets. But this was different. As much as he believed in the mission of establishing peace and saving as many lives as possible, Draven had seen what otuchan raiding parties had left of Zhogalgan settlements. There was no doubt who had been the aggressor on Zhogalgan, and while the local humans had their flaws, that didn’t mean, to him, that they were on the same moral level with the otuchan raiding parties that the Grand Democracy had decided to arm.

We let our antipathy for the Corvanites turn us into exactly what they say we are.

That was an ugly thing to contemplate.

As the blowers entered the compound, they spread out, First and Second Platoons going left, Third and Fourth to the right. The command element and the mortar section continued on straight, toward the landing pads and the central pre-fab. The only sound was the howl of the fans echoing off the walls of the containers and buildings. There was no movement visible from where Draven rode in the hatch. It looked as if the installation had been abandoned.

That didn’t make sense, though, not if there were enough weapons and munitions here that it required a full company to come out and dispose of them. Something wasn’t right.

“First and Third Platoons, dismount and sweep the buildings. Second and Fourth, maintain overwatch and security.” Draven didn’t bother to consult with Captain Thill before issuing his orders. The captain had always been generally uninterested in the basic, tactical elements of the company’s functions. He was more of a “big picture” thinker.

Hardsuited troopers began to spill out of the infantry blowers, weapons in hand. Draven couldn’t help but compare their movement with what he’d seen of the Corvanite infantry the few times that they’d operated side by side—rare enough, given the growing antipathy between the two factions. The Zolarians tended to move more slowly and deliberately than the Corvanites, who always displayed a degree of speed and aggressiveness that reminded him of loupecailles, the loping, long-toothed pack predators that had harried the frontier settlements on Zolah long ago. Of course, Zolarian soldiers didn’t train their whole lives to be soldiers—that was just one more duty of being a citizen—so it was natural that the Corvanites were going to be somewhat better at it, as much as it galled Draven, who had made a career of the Army, to admit it.

The hardsuits didn’t help. They were bulky and stiff, mainly because they needed to be fully articulated to bear their weight almost entirely by themselves. Zolarian egalitarianism meant that no one could be turned away from the service for any reason, and that meant that they had a few smaller, slower, and weaker troopers who would be crushed by their armor if they had to wear the types of hardsuits the Corvanites wore.

This was another reason they tended to move more slowly than their rivals.

Draven watched the sweep begin, troopers forming up on each door, triggering the opening mechanism, and carefully pieing off the portals before stumping in across the thresholds. He kept his helmet’s audio enhancement turned up, the comm volume reduced. He would be able to react to a gunshot faster than a comm call afterward.

Yet there were no shots. Routine announcements that each building was clear, along with the platoon sergeants’ coordinating instructions, formed a low, background murmur.

Could it be this easy?

Finally, the reports started coming in. “First Sergeant, it’s Sergeant Al Tabaq.” His senior platoon sergeant sounded tired. “We’ve completed the sweep. No personnel are on site, and all the automated systems appear to have been shut down. The power cell is still working, but at minimal capacity.”

Draven watched the soldiers coming out of the buildings with that hesitancy characteristic of not having found an expected threat and lacking orders. Corvanites would probably still be on alert, but that seems like a waste of effort here. There’s nothing visible for kilometers in any direction.

“Did you find weapons?” He knew they probably would, but he wanted confirmation.

There was a pause, and from the tone of Al Tabaq’s voice when he came back on comm, Draven suspected there had been a derisive snort as preface to his words. “I’ll say we did, First Sergeant. There’s enough here to equip a combined arms battalion for months. Whoever’s been bringing this stuff here, they’ve been stockpiling it for a while.”

Perhaps since the Corvanites arrived? Draven shook off the thought. No, it couldn’t be that bad. The decision to arm the otuchans against the Corvanites—even though it seemed as if the otuchans hadn’t been considerate enough to limit their target list to the other offworlders—had been made in desperation, as the other “peacekeepers” had decided to escalate the war rather than contribute to its peaceful end.

“There are entire containers of small arms, ammunition, and lasers,” Al Tabaq continued. “Combat drones, micro bombardment missiles…” Draven could almost see the sergeant first class shaking his head. “There are even quick-deploy automated defense turrets, both autogun and laser variants.”

“Any sign of provenance?” Draven was still hoping, in the back of his mind, that it was just a corrupt politician back home who had contracted some smugglers. It didn’t sound that way, judging by Thill’s brief, but there was always some hope.

“Almost all the weapons are Wathelet or Kutan.” Draven almost winced at the second name. It wasn’t a Zolarian company, or even from Aube Prime. Kutan Armaments was a Newlander company responsible for arming most of those technocratic authoritarian worlds in the Alpha Centauri bloc. That wasn’t good news.

It got worse. “The defense turrets are all ours, though, First Sergeant. Regular RDT-72s. The new ones. I trained on them just about twelve thousand hours ago.”

Well, no question about it now. We have to obliterate this place, because if anyone who isn’t us gets their hands on any of this, it’s going to be trouble. They’ll link us even more with the Newlanders, and that’s the last thing we want. The fact that the Grand Democracy got lumped together with the “Republic” of Newland was a source of constant, tooth-grinding rage to Draven. The Grand Democracy might be flawed, sagging under the weight of corruption and arrogance, but it was no eugenicist hive like Newland.

“Start getting charges placed.” He looked around the installation again. “Use everything we brought. This place needs to be a crater after we leave.”

He’d barely finished speaking when turrets swiveled skyward and an alert tone chimed in his helmet. “Unidentified aircraft incoming. High rate of speed.” The automated fire direction program built into the company’s network spoke with a faintly incongruous female voice that always sounded simpering to Draven.

The program projected a threat indicator on his visor, and he pivoted toward it. The aircraft were still too far away to see with the naked eye, and while he could have brought up an overlay from the network, he grabbed his magnifiers instead.

The two planes were jets, with their engines underslung beneath wide, almost straight wings. Their cockpits were angular and faceted. Otuchan aircraft, as if their direction of approach hadn’t already made that obvious. They were coming from the nearest otuchan settlement, codenamed Orient Three, since the otuchans didn’t tend to share their names for things with the humans. Both aircraft were flying high and fast, though still at a crawl compared to Zolarian gunships, let alone starfighters. Even so, they were high enough and fast enough that they could probably already see the compound—and the Zolarian company inside it.

“Sergeant Al Tabaq, you need to get your platoon moving and get those charges set. I have a feeling we’re going to have company soon.”

“Yes, First Sergeant.” Whatever Al Tabaq thought of the mission or the objective, he was all business now. He’d seen the same alert that Draven had. Everyone on the officer and noncom net had.

Captain Thill, however, seemed to have ignored it. “First Sergeant Draven? What’s going on? Why the rush?”

With a sigh, Draven dropped back down inside the blower to brief his commanding officer without putting it out over the net.

Outside, the troops began to unload the massive demolitions charges, strapping them to their armor and carrying them inside the containers even as the otuchan jets flew by overhead with a distant, growling roar, combat lasers tracking them in case they tried to drop bombs or launch rockets, though for now they held their fire.

The mission had just taken on an urgency that Draven hadn’t expected.

CHAPTER 12

Captain Haarot was waiting beside the landing pads on Combat Operations Base Defender, the sprawling hub for all Corvanite operations in the southern sector of the human settlements on the planet. Behind machine-built earthworks, tight compounds of orbital drop containers formed barracks, warehouses, hangars, garages, armories, and headquarters buildings. It was as stark and spartan as any other Corvanite installation Bannon had ever been on, and he felt right at home.

What he was worried about was the captain’s after-action comments. They were always harsh, and in all the years that Bannon had served under him, he’d never gotten through a debrief without feeling as if he, personally, had failed. It could be hard serving underneath a genuine legend who didn’t think he was any such thing, and therefore demanded comparable performance from every man in his unit.

Haarot stood with his feet apart, still in full combat gear, his rifle hanging at his side, his arms folded as he watched Third Phalanx unload from the still-smoking drop shuttles, Lewiski dragging the captured otuchan. Lewiski was hardly the largest man in the phalanx, but he’d made the capture—albeit with his lieutenant’s help—and he wasn’t going to give his prisoner up without being ordered to.

The otuchan was restrained, but he looked around the combat operations base with interest, his toothy maw still set in what looked almost like a grin. Being reptilian, the otuchans probably didn’t use facial expressions much, and Bannon knew that he shouldn’t take the set of the captive’s jaws as an indication of anything, but he couldn’t help but get a bad feeling when he looked in those slit-pupiled eyes.

Haarot watched the casualties get carried off the shuttles, his face still impassive. He said nothing as the poncho-wrapped bodies were placed on stretchers and taken toward the morgue. They’d eventually be put on the next resupply shuttle and sent, in deep freeze, back up to the Thunderer, either to wait for rotation back to Corvan Major, or to be put on another supply ship and sent back that way.

Bannon took up a position at the captain’s right hand, counting his men off the shuttles. As much as he wanted a shower, a meal, and sleep, not necessarily in that order, he had to wait until Haarot dismissed him.

“Come with me, Lieutenant.” The moment the last of Third Phalanx had marched past, heading for their barracks, Haarot had turned on his heel and strode toward the 102nd Company’s headquarters without a backward glance.

Bannon followed without a word. He had already given Ollan, Killian, Hern, and Summ their orders on the ballistic arc from the badlands to COB Defender. There was little extraordinary about those instructions: weapons and gear maintenance would come first, followed by rest and chow, then vehicle maintenance the next day. Ollan could handle that.

The captain led the way into his office, just off the combat operations center, where most long-range operations were planned. The room was as bare as anywhere else on the base, possibly even more so. Corvanite warriors were discouraged from too much in the way of personal indulgences, and after reaching the agoge field, they were supposed to view their unit as their family. Most men still had some mementos that they carried around with them, usually mounted in their bunkspace, but Haarot had nothing—no mementos of past commands, or past victories, or even the actions that had earned him the Lion Shield three times. All that was in his office, which doubled as his bunkroom, was a desk, two field chairs, a field chest, an armor tree where his hardsuit was mounted, and his bunk.

The captain set his rifle in its rack next to the armor tree, then shed his helmet and his load-bearing gear. “Make yourself comfortable, Lieutenant.”

That was an odd enough command from the captain that Bannon blinked before setting down his weapon and equipment. In the meantime, Haarot had sat down behind his desk, leaning back and folding his arms again.

“I got your report, Lieutenant. It seemed fairly complete. Unfortunately, there was no clear implication of just who is supplying the otuchans with advanced human weapons.”

“That’s why we took the prisoner, sir.” Bannon felt like he was defending his actions, despite the odds that his men had been up against, but that was what every conversation with Captain Haarot felt like.

Haarot nodded, though his expression still displayed neither approval nor disapproval. “His interrogation will begin shortly. You should be commended, Lieutenant. To my knowledge, no otuchan prisoners have yet been taken in this conflict.”

Bannon couldn’t quite help himself. “Has anyone ever taken one of the otuchan diaspora prisoner, sir?”

A grave nod. “Indeed. An entire phratry surrendered on Kaltoricx. They refused to speak much, but they had been nearly decimated, and they handed themselves over.”

Despite his nerves at being one on one with Captain Haarot, and uncertain as to what, exactly, the captain expected of him, Bannon was intrigued. The savagery the otuchans had unleashed on the human Zhogalganites had been such that he—and probably most Corvanites, along with most of the locals—had assumed they were fanatics. He’d heard intel about the otuchan diaspora, and their almost universal aggression and refusal to coexist with other races, but this was the first time he’d actually fought them. The news that their prisoner’s surrender was not unique was interesting.

Still, he knew better than to ask questions of Captain Haarot that might be considered off the subject.

Haarot studied him. “You accomplished the mission as given, Lieutenant, and while some more intel would have been of use, and you might have used the starfighter support to destroy more of the enemy forces, you did make a capture.” There was the captain’s always-critical evaluation again. Bannon just sat there, his back straight, his face impassive, and listened. He had come to expect this from the captain, and the fact that it bothered him seemed to be un-Corvanite of him, so he did his best to accept it.

Haarot leaned forward and put his elbows on his desk. For a long moment he looked down at the desktop and the small terminal embedded in it, as if thinking deeply. Bannon didn’t think he’d ever seen Captain Haarot look pensive before. He was always sure of himself, sure of the mission, and to hell with anyone who wasn’t.

Finally, Haarot looked up at him, his eyes faintly squinted, deepening the already considerable crow’s-feet around them. Haarot had been on dozens of worlds and burned by as many suns over a long career. The gray in his hair was as earned as any Bannon had ever seen.

“You’ve been a hell of an asset, Bannon. As a squad sergeant and as a phalanx commander, I couldn’t have asked for a better subordinate.” He looked down at his hands again.

Bannon realized with a shock that this was hard for the captain. He was trying to say something that didn’t come easily to him. Haarot wasn’t the type of officer who was seen as “a father to his men.” He commanded, and he expected to be obeyed. End of expectations. Telling his men that he was proud of them went against the grain. That might make them soft, make them complacent. Yet here he was, trying to touch on something deeper.

The captain leaned back again, putting his hands on the desk, and locked his eyes on Bannon’s. “I told you that if you came back alive, I might tell you why I picked Third Phalanx for the deep recon mission.”

The pause after that went on so long that Bannon realized he should probably respond. “Yes, sir.”

Again the captain paused, looking down at his terminal with narrowed eyes. When he looked up again, with a deep breath, Bannon realized a decision had been made. A door had been closed. Whatever he’d been thinking of saying, it was gone. “It was a test, of sorts. Commander Fox has been talking about having at least one phalanx per company capable of conducting long-range special operations, far from direct support, and with a requirement that the phalanx commander and his men be capable of operating on their own, making tactical and strategic-level decisions that could potentially affect the whole war, and with enough of an understanding of the commander’s intent that they can be trusted with that sort of responsibility. Your performance as a phalanx commander since Ka-Tos made you a natural candidate. I’m glad that you confirmed my assessment.” He stood suddenly, and Bannon scrambled to follow suit. “You and your men can expect similar assignments to come your way when they arise. You’ll be back on patrol schedule in the next few days, but I want you to be prepared to move quickly when orders come down from Commander Fox.”

“Understood, sir.” It was as good an answer as any, and while Bannon knew it was best to keep his reactions in check in Captain Haarot’s presence, he couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride. He and his men had risen to the top of the captain’s list of prospects for such missions. When a captain was as hard to please as Haarot was, that was high praise.

“Now, I know that you have rest and maintenance coming up, but it seems only appropriate that you come and witness the interrogation.” Haarot looked at his chrono. “It won’t start immediately, but I’ll send for you when it’s time. You should be able to get most of your administrative details worked out by then. Even get some sleep.”

Bannon stiffened to attention. “Yes, sir. I appreciate it, sir.”

Haarot gave him a sharp nod. “Dismissed.”

Wondering a little at what had just happened, Bannon pivoted on his heel and strode out of the captain’s office, heading for his phalanx’s barracks area. He had some good news, at least.

And maybe, when he got to sit in on the interrogation, he might get a few answers.

CHAPTER 13

The otuchan jets didn’t just fly over and depart. They continued to circle as the Zolarians unloaded the charges and got them set. They didn’t descend or attempt to attack, possibly because they were well aware there were twenty-seven combat-laser-equipped turrets tracking them.

Draven watched them through his magnifiers, standing next to the command blower. “Sergeant Al Tabaq, this is First Sergeant Draven. Status?” They’d been on site, watching those aircraft circle, for almost three hours already. The endurance of those otuchan jets was impressive. Crude though their tech might be by Zolarian standards, they knew some tricks that even Zolarians might be impressed by, if they took notice.

That they were just circling up there like carrion birds, though, watching and reporting, made him nervous.

He turned his attention to the horizon, as he had every few minutes for the last hour. It remained clear, a desolate tundra disappearing into the pale blue that shaded to almost indigo directly above. He hoped that he’d at least be able to spot a dust plume before a line of otuchan crawlers appeared over the ridge to the west. The blowers were going to take a few moments to get up to full power, and Captain Thill had already refused his request—twice—to energize and activate the compound’s exterior defenses. Those segmented domes were currently inert, and if the enemy showed up close enough, they were never going to get them up and running in time.

On top of which, the entire company was packed inside the fenced compound. Fenced, not walled. They had no room to maneuver.

“Last charges are getting set here, First Sergeant.” Al Tabaq sounded harried, as well he might. Not everyone was fully certified with demolitions, and the need for haste meant that he had a lot of junior soldiers who hadn’t worked with the explosives before hauling them to the target sites. That had to have given him a borderline heart attack at least half a dozen times since they’d started setting the charges. “No current information on the other platoons.”

“All platoon sergeants, check in.” Something was really raising the hackles on Draven’s neck as he turned his attention back to the planes in orbit overhead.

He’d barely spoken when a new alert pinged in his visor and his headphones. A window with the feed from one of the picket drones, currently orbiting about a kilometer out and five hundred meters up, blossomed in the upper corner of his visor.

His blood ran cold. The worst case he’d imagined, given what they’d seen so far, was a company-sized element. The otuchans hadn’t attacked any of the human settlements with more than that. There were theories that the rivalries between phratries wouldn’t allow for any larger forces to amass. But the mass of tracked and wheeled crawlers now grinding over the tundra toward the installation was far larger than a company-sized element. He couldn’t count in the small, faintly blurry image, but if he had to guess, he would have said it was close to the size of the combined arms battalion that Sergeant Al Tabaq had described as being the target force for the number of weapons they’d found.

The terrain had masked their approach from the drone. They were already less than ten klicks away.

Draven wondered bitterly how the ships in orbit had missed it as well, but then he reflected that command seemed to want to keep this embarrassing little episode as hush-hush as possible.

Which meant that their company was expendable.

“All platoons, get your blowers revved up and ready to move.” He started for the command blower immediately. “All demolitions elements, you have two minutes to finish, set your timers, and get to your blowers.”

He stormed up the ramp and into the command blower, to find Captain Thill turned around in his seat. As per regulations, the captain was still wearing his helmet, even though he was inside an armored vehicle, though a hit that would penetrate the armor would probably also pulp anyone inside, hardsuit or no hardsuit. “What are you doing, First Sergeant? I gave no such orders.”

“There’s no time, sir. We have incoming.” Draven pointed to the holo display again, though it wasn’t showing the full tactical feed. “We have to move now. We’re sitting canhars here.”

“The charges have to be set right. We can’t leave any trace.” Captain Thill folded his arms as Draven found his own seat on the other side of the holo display. “We will hold this position until the charges are set and I have had time to inspect them. You may instruct the platoons to spread the vehicles into a skirmish line outside the fence, but we cannot leave until I am sure that the entire installation will be completely destroyed beyond hope of reconstruction.”

“Have you looked at the picket drone feed, sir?” Draven had plenty of practice when it came to being civil with officers who didn’t necessarily deserve it. “That’s easily a battalion, possibly a reinforced battalion. We don’t have the numbers or the firepower to face them in a standup fight. We need to either get out of here, or we need to call for a strike from the Fraternity now.”

“They are otuchans, First Sergeant.” Captain Thill sounded downright petulant, though Draven figured he thought he was being patronizing. “Without the advanced weapons in this facility, they won’t stand a chance. We have them outranged easily, especially with the combat drones. We can keep them at bay until the charges are set to my satisfaction.”

Draven tried not to grit his teeth. “Sir, just look at the drone feed. Please.” He had nowhere near the captain’s confidence that a single infantry company could hold off what he was looking at. They might have the otuchans outranged, barely, but given the size of some of the cannon, not to mention the boxy rocket launchers, he doubted it would be enough to matter.

Numbers do still count, even against superior tech.

With an audible sigh that rasped over the comms, Thill changed the holo display to bring up the drone feed. The image flickered into being above the projector plate, and the captain froze, his finger still hovering over the control.

Draven let him take in the mass of otuchans and their vehicles that were coming their way. “That’s only one drone, sir. There may well be more that we can’t see yet. This installation and its cargo are valuable, and the otuchans know it. They have to know that we’re trying to destroy it, too, since they’ve been watching us from the air for the last three hours.”

Thill stared at the holo for a full minute. While his helmet hid his face and his expression, he seemed to be locked in a debate of sorts. Draven thought he could imagine what was going on. Thill had to realize that they were far too outnumbered to hold their position, at least not without considerable casualties, not to mention the sheer bloodshed they’d have to unleash upon the otuchans to hold their own. Like it or not, they were under observation, and everything would be recorded, if only for political fodder later on.

That was a problem with the way the Grand Democracy had come to function. While the majority of the Zolarian population was essentially sidelined by those with the money and influence to actually make things happen, those who were involved—or wanted to be, which meant most of the officers—had to balance everything by its political implications.

And slaughtering scores of the people they were supposed to be “helping” was going to be used against Captain Thill later on, whether it was justifiable or not. Same with any friendly casualties.

It was as much of a factor in the conflict with the Corvanites over Zhogalgan as it was in the fundamental disagreements in philosophy between the Grand Democracy and the militaristic Council. Which was infuriating, but there was no getting around it.

Thill finally unfroze, apparently having come to a conclusion. “I think you may be right, First Sergeant.” That had to hurt. “Proceed with the redeployment and have anyone not currently involved in setting the demolitions mounted up and prepared to move.” He held up a hand as Draven started to turn back toward the ramp. “Those charges have to be set, though. We cannot afford to leave here without destroying the cache.”

“Understood, sir.” To Draven’s way of thinking, the cache was less than at the top of his priority list. Getting the company out before they got into a four-to-one slugging match with the otuchans—who were much better shots than Thill was giving them credit for—was his primary responsibility.

Getting down off the ramp, he switched to the noncom net. Captain Thill probably didn’t even know that there was a separate net for the noncommissioned officers, and Draven wasn’t going to enlighten him if he didn’t. “Sergeant Al Tabaq, status?”

“Almost done, First Sergeant.” Al Tabaq paused. “Do we need to do something about those aircraft?”

Draven looked up. The two jets had gotten lower and were circling like birds of prey. With his magnifiers, he could see that they had gun pods slung underneath their bellies, though their wings were laden with fuel tanks rather than bombs or rocket pods.

“Hold your fire.” He knew that they probably should have shot the two planes down long before, but Captain Thill wouldn’t stand for it. They were still operating in that delicate balance of politics and tactical reality that would always lean toward politics, simply because this was supposed to be a “peacekeeping” operation. They had engaged the otuchans at Az Ku because they’d been fired upon, but they couldn’t initiate combat without an express order from General Pleimelding. “If we move quickly enough, we can get clear before they attack. Are the charges set? The captain is adamant that we can’t leave unless we can ensure this entire installation gets turned into a crater.”

Al Tabaq was too much of a professional to let his feelings about that leak into his words, but the brief pause before he replied spoke volumes. “Understood, First Sergeant.” Another moment. “Looks like we have one more charge to set. No idea about the other platoon.”

“Sergeant Ferrier.” There was a reason that Draven had assigned the platoons to the demolitions tasks that he had. “Status?”

“Last charges are set, First Sergeant.” The howl of blower fans was getting louder. “Getting the last of the platoon mounted and ready to move.”

Draven acknowledged, checking the rest of the company’s dispositions. The drone section was still there in the center with the command section, and Yusuko’s and Akiwe’s platoons had pushed outside the fence as instructed, though they were still slow to form up into a defensible skirmish line. He shook his head faintly. He really wished he could fire both sergeants first class and get someone else in there, but unfortunately, while they were inexperienced and somewhat bad at their jobs, Yusuko especially was very good at currying favor with the captain.

Still, when he checked the drone feed again, he started to hope that they could get clear before the bulk of the otuchan force was in range. It would be close, but the blowers were faster than the crawlers.

Not the aircraft, though. That could be their biggest problem.

“Two minutes.” He made the decision for the captain. “Sergeant Al Tabaq, acknowledge.”

“Good copy, First Sergeant. It’s going to be close, but we’ll be on the move by then.”

The blowers’ fans were getting louder. Draven turned and ran back up the ramp into the command blower, slamming his armored fist against the button to raise it, shutting the blower’s troop compartment and getting them ready to move. “Edmons, get us moving.” He ignored the captain as he gave their driver the orders to pull them out of the installation. The decision had been made, and now the execution was on the noncoms.

He got to his seat as the blower lifted, rocked slightly on its air cushion, and pivoted toward the gate. The surge of acceleration told him that Edmons was taking the threat much more seriously than Captain Thill was.

Since the captain was focused on something else on the holo display, Draven brought up his own tac map on his visor. Second Platoon was already out front, leading the way in a wedge as they drove east and south, away from the installation. That hadn’t quite been his instructions, since they still had personnel and vehicles inside the compound that needed cover, but he would deal with Yusuko later.

“Finished.” Al Tabaq actually sounded slightly angry over the comms, which was explained when Draven saw that Fourth Platoon had fallen in behind the drone section, leaving Third and First to bring up the rear. He just sighed. There was only so much he could do without one or another officer accusing him of becoming an authoritarian. And this was not the time nor the place to get into an argument about order of movement.

“Incoming!”

It didn’t take much more than a quick swivel of the tac display to see what the alarm was about. The two jets had kept flying north, toward the distant ice cap, but had now banked and come around to face the column, accelerating as they started to descend.

“Spread out! On-line! All vics, move now!” They might still lose a blower or two, but at least if they managed to get the whole company in a line perpendicular to the aircraft’s approach, they should be able to limit the damage.

Of course, that also depended on moving fast, faster than the otuchan planes could bring their guns to bear. Which was just a little too much to ask, even with the blowers’ agility.

Muzzle flashes flickered underneath the lead aircraft’s belly, and heavy slugs tore into the dirt and plants, walking toward the center of the column. Two blowers were hit. One withstood the impacts, though they blasted craters in the armor plating, but the second lost a fan. It slowed and sagged, one of its skirts momentarily scraping the ground. The two jets roared overhead, their crackling bursts of gunfire stopping as they pulled up and started to bank away.

“All units, open fire. Bring those planes down.” Once again, Draven didn’t even look at Captain Thill. This was standard operating procedure, despite the political implications. They’d been fired upon, so they were now clear to shoot back.

Turrets pivoted and lasers stabbed skyward, using computer assistance to find their targets. The beams traveling line-straight and light-swift, they could hardly miss.

Brilliant, actinic flashes tore the lead plane apart, and it quickly turned into a fireball arcing toward the ground. The second took a hit to the wing, tearing off about a third of it, and went into a spiraling dive. It looked like it was as stricken as the first, until the pilot recovered just above the ground and darted away, flying so low that Draven imagined he could see dust being kicked up from the ground by the jet wash. In seconds, the wounded aircraft was out of sight, flying nap of the earth through every bit of tortured landscape possible.

He hadn’t expected an otuchan pilot to be that good.

The formation had gotten strung out and ragged, the wounded blower putting every other vehicle close to it off their course. Draven was already on comms, directing the rest of the company to keep moving and protect the damaged blower. Even as he barked orders, however, he could see by the tac display that unless there was an entire squadron of otuchan fliers on the way, they were clear. They were already opening the distance between them and the oncoming reinforced battalion of the lizards’ crawlers.

Behind them, as the blowers’ dust rose into the dark blue sky, the first of the charges went up with a flash, followed a moment later by a rolling boom. Then another, then another. Soon a roiling mushroom cloud was climbing into the sky over what had been the Zolarians’ supply base for the otuchans, hopefully burying their involvement for the rest of time.

Hopefully.

CHAPTER 14

The captured otuchan sat in a restraining rig designed hastily for his bowlegged, long-torsoed physiology. It was somewhat surprising that they had such a device, since no one had captured an otuchan prior to now in the entire course of the conflict on Zhogalgan. The otuchans had been too cunning, too dedicated to the hit-and-run raids, fading whenever the more heavily armed and armored Corvanites or Zolarians showed up, though rarely without inflicting damage first.

The creature hung in the restraints, his scaly skin exposed except for his loins. The otuchans were tough enough that if coercive measures had been employed already, they didn’t show. His slit-pupiled eyes simply watched the figures of Bannon, Lewiski, and Haarot as they entered the interrogation area to join the Intelligence officer.

“Captain Faris.” Haarot had his helmet under his arm, his rifle slung at his side, as always. Bannon found it somewhat interesting that Faris was unarmed, but he supposed Intelligence officers wouldn’t bring weapons into a room where they might have to get close to their subjects. “You asked for Lieutenant Bannon and Private Lewiski.” It wasn’t a question.

Faris stood almost half a head taller than Haarot, and was rail-thin, with a hawkish, ascetic face. His eyes were cold as he looked Bannon and Lewiski over. “Indeed. You captured the subject?”

“Yes, sir.” Faris hadn’t asked for details, so Bannon assumed that he’d read the after-action report. What exactly the man would want with the two warriors who’d made the capture, Bannon had no idea.

Faris nodded, then stepped aside and waved toward the restrained otuchan. “He’s stood up to the information probes we’ve attempted so far. The only thing he’s said is that he will address only those who ‘showed they were superior to him.’” The intelligence officer raised an eyebrow. “I can only assume that means you, since you captured him after decimating his phratry’s forces, or so the after-action leads me to believe.”

“That’s correct sir.” Bannon turned his attention to the otuchan. The alien’s scaled skin was greener than he remembered, but maybe it was the light. Or maybe it was because he’d really only ever studied the otuchans through a rifle sight. “If that’s the case, we’ll do what we have to, sir.” Bannon glanced at Haarot, who had taken a step back and was simply observing the scene, silent and impassive.

“The most important information we need right now is where their weapons are coming from, how many they have, and what sort of dispositions close to human territory they have. If you can find out how many phratries have the advanced weapons and are in a position to threaten the Zhogalganite settlers, that would help as well.” Faris made no attempt to conceal his line of questioning from the prisoner, who was watching them, unblinking, alert despite whatever duress he had been put through.

“Yes, sir.” Bannon glanced at Lewiski, who just looked over his shoulder at Captain Haarot, obviously wishing he were anywhere else. Hern’s strict routine between missions probably looked awfully inviting compared to attempting to conduct an interrogation—something that neither Bannon nor Lewiski had trained on—while their taskmaster of a company commander watched.

Bannon forced himself to tune Haarot’s presence out. The otuchan was the mission, so he was going to do what was asked of him and do it to the best of his ability.

He stepped forward. “What is your name, otuchan?”

The alien shifted its flattened head, bringing both lidless eyes to bear on him. “I am Ekshnaz.” The voice was dry and raspy, fitting the otuchan language of mostly hisses, gutturals, and clicks. It took a half second for the translator program to render the otuchan’s words into Anglisch.

That was progress already. Ekshnaz had been the chieftain of the phratry who had been accused in council of keeping all the advanced weapons to themselves.

“Why do you wish to speak to me, Ekshnaz?”

The jaws parted slightly in what might have been a predatory grin on a human, though Bannon couldn’t begin to be sure. “You beat my phratry. Surprised us. Overwhelmed us with the fury of your assault. You proved yourselves superior, at least for now. It is fitting that the lesser should serve the greater, until the lesser may become stronger than that which was greater. For now, you are greater. So I will speak when you question.”

Bannon had the list of questions Faris had given him to ask, but something made him ask one of his own first. “Combat is the test of who is fitter to survive?”

Once again, that gape of toothy jaws. “Of course. One of them. Conflict is a part of existence. How can one be fit to survive if one cannot fight in conflict?”

While it was entirely probable that the otuchan couldn’t read human expressions or body language any better than Bannon could read those of the otuchan, Bannon kept his expression carefully neutral. He thought this was an interesting insight, though. A piece of the puzzle of their enemy slipped into place.

That’s why they didn’t pursue. Survival of the fittest is their motto, not honor or fanaticism. We’d already killed a lot of them, and they saw that as a test they’d failed, so they needed to adjust and evolve before they tried again.

That’s probably also why they attacked the Zhogalganites in the first place. How could they even think about coexisting with the humans if they hadn’t tested them? Of course, that becomes a vicious cycle, because the loser, if they survive, is always trying to get better and come back for the next go-round.

“You acknowledge our superior fitness, then?”

A strange hiss. Maybe a laugh? “For now. Evolution must go on, human.”

“So you might still fight us if you were to escape? Or be let go?”

“Of course.” While the translator’s tone was flat and listless, and the tone of the hisses, grunts, and clicks of the otuchan’s language was impossible to judge, Bannon got the sense that the alien thought the question was ridiculous, simply asking the obvious.

“Are you really demonstrating your fitness when you’re using human weapons?”

Bannon felt Haarot’s eyes on the back of his head, but Faris hadn’t said a word or made any sign that he didn’t approve of this line of questioning. It seemed like a natural segue, at least to Bannon, though he had to admit that he was well out of his depth. He was no interrogator, and even less of an expert in otuchan psychology.

Again there was that strange hiss in reply. “The tools do not make the difference. The cunning to get the tools is a survival trait.” The hiss crackled a little more loudly. “Your rivals were certainly eager enough to provide them. They do not have the hearts of true survivors. They are soft. Sheltered. They wish to believe that by arming us to drive you away, they will themselves be spared, and that we will be grateful enough to them to live as they do.”

Bannon hoped that Faris was recording this, because if they needed any more evidence to confront the Zolarians with their perfidy, they weren’t going to find a better example.

“How many phratries did they arm?” The otuchan was talking freely thus far, and Bannon was starting to think this interrogation might not be difficult after all. It was absurd that their prisoner felt like he was obligated by the hierarchy of evolution to cooperate with the aliens who had captured him, but Bannon surely wasn’t about to complain.

“I would not know.” A hiss/grunt that the translator didn’t interpret. “They offered the weapons along with their platitudes about peace and understanding, about balance of power and stopping the war instead of fighting it, like your people do. They did not give us a full reckoning of how many of us they gave the weapons to.”

“There were many phratries staging there in the valley where we captured you. Are there more coming? Is there a larger attack in the works?” Bannon hoped the translator would render his somewhat colloquial Anglisch into the otuchan language effectively.

For a long moment Ekshnaz just stared at him. The otuchan hadn’t blinked the entire time the interrogation had been going on, but now a pair of nictating membranes flicked across his eyes.

“You said you would cooperate, since we have shown ourselves your superiors in battle,” Bannon prompted.

“Yes. And yet.” The otuchan didn’t move, but somehow, despite his alien mannerisms and body language, Bannon could sense that something had shifted. “Should I tell you everything I know, then my value to you is spent, and therefore my life may be forfeit.” That grunt/hiss again. “Survival has many facets.”

“You think that you’re going to survive long enough to escape us?” Bannon might have sneered, but he suspected there was more going on here than met the eye. Ekshnaz was too calm, too confident. Alien or not, he had to have some reaction, some fear or chagrin at being a prisoner. He displayed none of that. His words were those of a being who was on top of the situation, which hardly seemed appropriate given his restraints. Or the nature of the information probes that Captain Faris had already employed.

“Should I not?” Ekshnaz said. “Should I resign myself to death in captivity, at your hands? That would ensure that I am unfit. No. I will not surrender so completely. I will cooperate, up to a point, because you did best me and my phratry. The war is not over, however. We evolve. We adapt. We grow better. Eventually, we will dominate this world.” He shut his eyes then. “It is the way of the universe. The fit, survive. The weak, die. We will be the fit.”

“Time will tell.” Bannon was temporizing. Ekshnaz had turned his head toward the wall, away from Bannon and the other Corvanites altogether, as if unilaterally declaring the interview over. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, not in an interrogation. “I have more questions.”

Ekshnaz did not respond. In fact it looked as if he had gone to sleep, nictating membranes closing over his eyes.

Bannon frowned, studying the prisoner, wondering just how to proceed. He was about to venture another question when Captain Faris stepped forward and took him by the arm, drawing him back a step. “It won’t do any good.” His voice was low, though it was entirely possible that the otuchan could still hear him. “We have tried the information probes with no effect.” He steered Bannon and the others toward the door. “Come.”

They moved out to the adjoining room, Haarot still stony-faced. Faris waited until the door had shut behind them. “Well, that was interesting. So far, everything fits with what we know about the philosophy and psychology of the otuchan diaspora.”

Haarot spoke for the first time. “If he can’t be probed, then he only spoke because he wanted to. How sure can we be that he was telling the truth? This could all be disinformation.”

“It could be,” Faris allowed. “There’s an element to their thinking that emphasizes that if one cannot survive a fight without out-and-out trickery, then that’s a sign of weakness. And yet, from what the computer could read of his cues, he wasn’t lying.” He shrugged. “I’m sure that some of them rationalize just where the line that denotes ‘trickery’ lies, but it does seem to be a common concept across the diaspora.”

“How sure are you that the computer can tell us if an otuchan is lying?” Haarot’s voice was as sour as his expression. “This seems like a waste of time.”

“Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.” Faris let a wolfish smile cross his face. “In fact, I will go so far as to say that it absolutely wasn’t a waste of time, whether the prisoner was telling the truth or not.” He jerked a thumb at the room behind them. “Every second of that conversation was recorded. That recording will be all over the planet in an hour, all over the system within a day. It will be on the first ship out through the wormhole to Corvan Major, and from there, it will be disseminated to every major power within twenty parsecs.

“Our original mission on this world was to confront the Zolarians without starting a war outright. They have escalated the situation with their arms trafficking to the otuchans, since they couldn’t get the locals to turn on us after we started to defend them instead of trying to force them to swallow the losses from otuchan massacres.” Faris folded his arms. “In fact, the Relentless just witnessed what appeared to be a Zolarian operation near the north polar ice cap, trying to destroy one of their delivery points to eliminate the evidence.” He pointed to the interrogation room. “But now, the prisoner’s statement will bring the Zolarians’ assumption of moral superiority crashing down in front of half the galaxy. Either they’ll withdraw, or the war that has been in the offing for decades finally begins.”

Bannon was listening without comment, wondering just what he should think about all of this. On the one hand, the Council of Corvan had been preparing for just this sort of war since its inception, and as an extension, so had every Corvanite born for fifty Corvan Major years. The Newlander Wars had left humanity as a whole scarred, and the continued spread of their ideology—made worse by their occasional alliances with Dawning Epoch—had been a threat hanging over the entire human constellation, along with more than a few alien worlds, ever since. The Zolarians might not be Newlanders, but they were close enough, their high-sounding rhetoric about “democracy” and “human progress” masking the corruption underneath. Even if they weren’t occasionally allied with the Newlanders—and they had been—then their sheer idealism would render everyone who went along with them vulnerable the next time the Newlanders decided to “improve” the species by force.

Yet over the course of at least a dozen minor wars—he’d lost count somewhere along the way—Bannon had seen just how bad even the small wars could get. The sheer ruin and destruction, with a better world rarely the result. Taking that up to a full interstellar scale was something that he suddenly found he wasn’t looking forward to. Victory might lie on the other side, but at what cost?

That wasn’t a terribly Corvanite way of thinking. But Bannon was getting older with his rank, and, he hoped, wiser.

An old, old quote came to mind. He wasn’t sure who had first said it, though it was said to have come from old Earth literature. I do not value the horse for its swiftness, or the sword for its sharpness, but rather what those things protect.

He knew that most Corvanites had been champing at the bit for years to test themselves in the next version of the Newlander Wars. Or the Thelon Wars. A part of him still felt the same pull. The same desire to be tested in the hottest fire. The part that looked back at the histories of the battles and accomplishments of his ancestors, who fought with less preparation, less equipment and firepower, and still prevailed, and wondered, Could I do as well?

Right at that moment, looking at Faris preparing to unleash what amounted to the first shots of such a war, he wasn’t sure where he stood. Except that he would do his duty.

Death comes. Let us go and meet it.

CHAPTER 15

Eawen DeVoto stared out at the Berinchi Konu skyline, his hands clasped behind his back, brooding. The thin clouds overhead heralded the coming of the wet season, though that wasn’t much on this arid rock.

He missed Zolah, and the beaches of the Casserian Sea. He missed the bustling, bright cities. Calling the view he was watching of Berinchi Konu a “skyline” almost physically hurt.

Not as much as the conversations that were about to happen, however.

The door whooshed open behind him. That alone was an artifact of Zolarian assistance. The Zhogalganites were so poor that they didn’t have automatic doors, even in the central government buildings.

DeVoto didn’t turn around. The timing told him who it would be. None of the outsiders were due for over an hour yet. “General.”

General Tous Pleimelding stepped up next to him by the window. Originally, the Grand Army’s dress uniforms had been deliberately understated, trying to emphasize the everyman, democratic nature of the Zolarian political system. Everyone was equal, and different people took their place within the machine of the government to do their civic duty—no more, no less. Over time, however, human nature had had its say. There were differing opinions about what had happened, ranging from the recognition that it took time, experience, and dedication to reach higher ranks, to the rank corruption that led to the glorification of individual opportunists. Yet the understated nature of the old uniforms had by now been replaced by the sleek, glittering costume with its golden shoulder boards that General Pleimelding now wore.

The truth, DeVoto suspected, in a small, dark corner of his mind that he tried not to look too deeply into, was that the ideal of the Grand Democracy was, ultimately, unworkable. The vast majority of the demos didn’t really understand the issues, and so it was best to get them to vote for the formation of cadres who did understand and could take care of things for them.

It was only fitting, of course, that those cadres live at the standard of the responsibilities they shouldered.

Still, as the administrator for the civilian side of the Grand Democracy’s peacekeeping operation on Zhogalgan, DeVoto’s own clothing seemed somewhat muted compared to Pleimelding’s garish uniform. His suit was a sleek cut, in a muted blue—though he knew his garment had cost more than twice what the general’s dress uniform had.

“Do you realize what a disaster this is?” DeVoto snapped. He didn’t turn his head to look at the general as he spoke. “What were you thinking? Arming the otuchans? We came here to separate the factions and keep them from fighting, not exacerbate the problem!”

“First of all, yes, I do realize that this is a political setback.” Pleimelding smoothed his mustaches. “However, need I remind you that the orders came from much higher up? Take it up with the cadres.”

“The cadres don’t exist, remember?” That was the fiction that kept the entire shaky edifice from toppling. Too many of the ordinary people still believed that they really had a say in the policies of the Grand Democracy. To maintain the functionality of the government and the society, that fiction was absolutely necessary, which meant the existence of the “cadres”—the councils of industrialists, scientists, and social influencers who really ran things—must always be denied.

“Of course I remember.” Pleimelding smiled faintly as he followed DeVoto’s gaze out at the pitiful excuse for a metropolis that was Zhogalgan’s capital city. “And the mandate still stands. It has simply been superseded by other concerns.”

“What other concerns?” DeVoto finally turned to face the general, his anger barely leashed. “The Corvanites?”

“Of course.” Pleimelding faced him in turn, raising a manicured eyebrow. “The Corvanites are the greatest threat to peace in this part of the galaxy by far. Certainly more than some brushfire clash between the hapless survivors of a Concordium exploration ship and the otuchan diaspora. They claim they’re preparing for the next round of Newlander Wars, yet it hasn’t been the Newlanders strong-arming every planetary government, human or otherwise, for a hundred light years from Corvan Major.” Pleimelding turned his attention back to the window. “The fact is, the diaspora otuchans don’t care about each other. That’s why they drop colonies with next to nothing and then leave them to live or die on their own. There would be no otuchan fleet coming to defend them if the Corvanites went to war with them, but if we made it costly enough for the Corvanites, made the fight against the otuchans in the hinterlands of this desolate planet into enough of a quagmire that they had to commit all their forces to that, while we cemented our alliance with the Zhogalganites… then they might have eventually won the battle but lost the war. We would have an outpost closer to their space than any we’ve had before.”

“If. Would have.” DeVoto put as much scorn into the words as he could. “The entire plan pivoted on the assumption that the Corvanites were too dumb to figure out the play.” He threw up his hands. “Good galaxy, man! The weapons were even from our sector of space!”

“There were mistakes made, I will admit.”

“Mistakes?” DeVoto pinned him with a stare. “They have a recording of an otuchan telling them that we supplied the weapons! Do you have any idea what kind of a rallying cry that could be? They’ve been telling everyone who will listen, as our own sphere of influence grows, that we’re just the Newlanders with a happy face! Now we’ve been caught facilitating the slaughter of other humans just to get an outpost close to their space!”

He hadn’t heard the door open. “Well, that’s progress.”

Both men turned, startled.

The man in the black suit was short and wiry, his hair receding. Wealthy worlds, such as Zolah, had the technology to avoid baldness, but this man’s world would eschew that technology for ideological reasons. The shrapnel scars on his neck and cheek that turned part of his close-cropped hair white were a clear indicator of his identity, even if DeVoto hadn’t already known him by sight.

“Consul Abraham.” DeVoto straightened, smoothing his suit, though he knew it was far too late. Only the programmed Corvanite reserve kept the man in black from openly gloating.

“Ambassador DeVoto.” Abraham had stepped out of the doorway, but didn’t advance much farther into the room, standing there with his arms folded. “Shall we dispense with the lies, now?”

“What lies would those be?” DeVoto had regained some of his equilibrium. “Are you truly willing to let a rogue operation derail the effort to create peace here on Zhogalgan?”

Abraham’s expression didn’t alter a whit. “A ‘rogue operation,’ hmm? That’s not what it sounded like from here.”

DeVoto couldn’t help but notice that Commander Fox, the Corvanite military leader in the system, had not attended. Only the consul. That was not a good sign.

It was a good thing that he already had his instructions.

“Of course it was a rogue operation.” He took a step as he turned away from the window, making as if he was pacing as he spoke, which Abraham would know that he was wont to do. It was a nervous habit that he’d never quite been able to break, even after tens of thousands of hours as a public speaker and public servant.

The step also distanced him from Pleimelding.

“Do you really think that the demos would go along with such a plan? To escalate a war we were pledged to stop?” He came to a halt, having moved several paces away from Pleimelding, who was standing straight by the window, staring with barely concealed malevolence at Abraham. “No. Despite your people’s paranoid delusions about us, that is not the way the Grand Democracy operates.” He brushed a hand against his sleeve, activating the call button built into the cuff. The trap was about to close. “The revelations that came to light even before your suspiciously convenient propaganda recording led to an investigation. That investigation revealed that General Pleimelding made a deal with certain Aubean arms smugglers to enrich himself. The otuchans were to furnish him with stocks of certain rare minerals that hadn’t been surveyed here in the human part of the planet.”

Pleimelding had stiffened further, and now he turned toward DeVoto with mingled shock and fury on his features. “DeVoto—”

He was interrupted by the door opening again, and this time four Zolarian soldiers in hardsuits and carrying rifles stepped in. Abraham was still unperturbed, though he took a careful step farther from the door as the soldiers entered.

“General, in the name of the Grand Democracy, you are under arrest for conspiracy, arms trafficking, and acting against the interests of the Grand Democracy and the people of the galaxy at large.” The captain reciting the charges spoke stiffly, reading off the message on his visor. DeVoto had written it himself. He wanted no mistakes here. The consequences of this meeting could be extremely far-reaching.

Pleimelding was still staring at him with a mix of horror, rage, and accusation in his eyes. DeVoto returned the stare blandly, hoping the man would go quietly. Pleimelding might be arrogant right down to his carefully tailored dress uniform, but he still had a sense of duty, one that had led him to facilitate what was arguably a horrific crime in arming the otuchans with advanced weapons.

And now DeVoto was throwing him to the wolves.

For the sake of peace, he had no other choice.

For a brief moment, it looked like Pleimelding was going to argue. To fight. Instead, with a glare of the blackest hatred DeVoto had ever seen, he turned his eyes away and faced the oncoming hardsuited soldiers, squaring his shoulders as he waited. He allowed two of them to take him by the arms, then marched out without a look behind him.

Abraham watched the entire little drama in silence. As the door hissed shut behind Pleimelding and his escort, he turned back to DeVoto, a sardonic look in his eyes.

“That was certainly convenient.” He clearly wasn’t buying the act, but he was as trapped as Pleimelding had been. He had to know that DeVoto had recorded the entire incident, and just as surely as the Corvanites had spread the recording of the otuchan’s “interrogation,” so DeVoto was going to make sure that news of Pleimelding’s disgrace and arrest would be sent all over the system and the sector as quickly as a starship could carry it.

“It is unfortunate that one man’s greed and ambition has led us to such straits.” DeVoto moved to the small bar at the side of the reception room and began to pour himself a drink. “Unfortunately, human nature is what it is, and even the greatest of us can be tempted by promises of wealth and power.” He lifted the glass. “Wine? It is from the highlands of Ozanne’s Bluffs. One hundred thirty-two thousand hours old. An excellent vintage, if I do say so myself.”

Abraham’s gaze was cool. He was far too cunning an operator not to understand exactly what the game was. “Thank you. I do not drink.”

Something about the way he said it made DeVoto sweat a little. His entire ploy had depended from the beginning on the Corvanites being forced to accept that the operation had been Pleimelding’s doing, thus distancing Zolah from it and giving their militaristic rivals no opening to blame the Grand Democracy for the humans who had died at otuchan hands by advanced human weapons.

But what if they didn’t? The Corvanites could be cunning, but they were occasionally blunt to the point of intractability, and it wasn’t always predictable as to when they might draw the line and pick a fight.

And after catching Zolarian weapons in the hands of otuchans who had already massacred at least five human settlements on Zhogalgan, when they’d come to the planet in the first place to make sure it didn’t become a Zolarian outpost… yes, he was sure they were spoiling for a fight.

He maintained his composure, however. He was an ambassador of the Grand Democracy, and there was far more at stake on this planet than the fates of a handful of Eurasian refugees and otuchan colonists. A general war between the Grand Democracy and the Council of Corvan could be disastrous.

That was why he’d justified what he’d done to Pleimelding. He’d counted the man a friend, of a sort. Men and women in his position rarely had real friends. You have those you are friendly to, and those you use. And the overlap is often considerable.

He wondered just how much Abraham thought in a similar way. While DeVoto didn’t know the other man well—that was impossible, given their opposed stances—the scarring on his body suggested that, like all Corvanites, he had been a warrior once. One who had done more than just put in his time to get to a higher position.

As the silence stretched, DeVoto realized he was going to have to take matters into his own hands. Abraham was giving him enough rope to hang himself, but there was no choice.

“I hope that we can put this problem behind us, and work together in the cause of peace on Zhogalgan.” He stepped away from the bar, cradling his wineglass in his hand. “That may mean a reconfiguring of patrol zones and schedules. There has been a great deal of bitterness engendered by this unfortunate incident, and it would be very bad to let it spill over into gunfire.”

Abraham let him sweat for another moment. A part of DeVoto couldn’t help but admire the man’s ruthlessness in negotiation. Soldier he might have been, but he’d certainly learned some of the more subtle forms of warfare along the way, as well.

“That would be the prudent course of action.” The Corvanite consul moved to one of the deeply upholstered chairs and sat down. Contrary to his people’s reputation, he didn’t sit at the edge as if he were afraid of the comfort of the cushions. “There is considerable distrust to be dealt with, as well.”

With a faint sigh of relief, DeVoto took up his data plate and moved to a chair opposite his Corvanite interlocutor. So, the Corvanites weren’t going to force a war. Not yet.

They could get down to business.

CHAPTER 16

The squad bay was relatively quiet as Bannon walked in. Sergeant Ollan barked, “Attention!” and the entire phalanx sprang to their feet.

“At ease.” Bannon wasn’t there for attention. “Carry on.”

His men went back to what they were doing, mainly cleaning gear and making sure that everything was ready for the next patrol.

They hadn’t gotten their patrol zone or schedule yet. Captain Haarot had given them a couple of days to stand down and rest and reset following the interrogation. Corvanites were notoriously hard, but even they needed some down time, especially during a long, grinding conflict that never seemed to end, like this one.

Bannon caught the eye of each of his squad leaders and inclined his head toward the little briefing area at the back of the squad bay. His own gear still needed attention, but he was the phalanx leader. He needed to check on his men before he saw to his personal needs.

Finding a spot next to the briefing board, he leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. The rest of the men were all in fatigues, their gear set aside for maintenance, and so was he. “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

Killian, Summ, and Hern sat down on the benches that surrounded the briefing board. Bannon looked around at them, noting Ollan’s absence. The assistant phalanx leader was probably counting bullets somewhere, since his job calling the phalanx to attention was over. Ollan didn’t much care about people, which made him useful for some things, but if Bannon had anything to say about it, it meant he would never see any higher rank than he had already reached.

Not that it would bother Ollan any. If he got promoted, he might have to talk to more people.

“How are the boys holding up?” With just his squad sergeants, Bannon could afford to be less formal. There was a balance to be struck, but he hoped he’d learned to strike it.

“Denig’s taking losing Coughman pretty hard.” Hern was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking up at Bannon. “They were tight. He’ll be okay, but we need to keep him busy for a while.”

Bannon looked over at Summ, who was studying the bench in front of him, frowning. “What about Venden?” He thought he knew the answer already, but Summ, who was about to be pinned a sergeant, needed to be able to tackle the leadership challenges, not just the tactical ones.

Summ shrugged. “The squad’s coping all right, I think.”

Killian snorted. “You can be honest here, Summ. Everyone in this room heard how Venden ran his mouth. I know we’re not supposed to speak poorly of the fallen, but the truth is what it is. You can say that nobody misses him.”

Summ hung his head, while Hern grinned sarcastically and shook his shoulder.

“Well, we’re still waiting on the next mission,” Bannon said. “Captain Haarot has said something to the effect that he wants us for something special, but even he doesn’t know what that is yet.”

“Probably capturing the entire otuchan nation by ourselves,” Killian muttered. When Bannon looked at him, the senior squad sergeant spread his hands. “Sorry, sir. It just seems like there’s no pleasing the captain. You pull off one impossible task, he demands another, or else you’re slacking.”

Bannon could only shrug. “Captain Haarot’s ways are Captain Haarot’s ways. We are under his command, so we just have to adjust to them.” The words sounded faintly hollow to him, but loyalty to the captain—a necessary part of serving under a Corvanite officer—precluded his saying anything more. “We have performed well enough lately that he’s had no complaints.”

Hern looked up at him with faintly narrowed eyes. “Speaking of which… rumor has it we’re the captain’s chosen special scout phalanx now.”

“Rumor, huh?” Bannon snorted. “Are you sure some of the boys weren’t listening at the captain’s door the other day?”

Hern and Killian shared a faint grin. “If that were the case, sir, we would have to take some disciplinary action.” Hern’s grin grew wider. “After all, spying on senior officers…”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Hern, and you damn well know it.”

His two senior squad sergeants were openly chuckling by now. Every one of them had learned to spy on their superiors to get warning of what was coming while they were on the agoge field.

Bannon was about to say something else, get a better feel for how the phalanx was dealing with the situation, especially their apparent new role, but his comm buzzed first.

“Lieutenant Bannon, report to my office.” Haarot didn’t sound like he was angry, at least not any angrier than usual.

“Speak the devil’s name…” Bannon heaved himself up from where he was leaning against the table and started toward the exit. “Make sure your squads are squared away and ready to move. If you’ve got them set before I get back, put them on rest plan. I have a feeling we might have another assignment coming our way.”

***

Captain Haarot was sitting at his desk, frowning at his data plate. He glanced up as Bannon came through the door and stepped in front of his desk, lifting a hand before Bannon could stiffen to attention and report. “At ease.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Bannon watched his company commander carefully, wondering just what was going on. Haarot didn’t usually dispense with the formalities of military courtesy so quickly.

Haarot tossed the data plate onto the desk. “This is important, and it gets me out of endless reports, so yes. Sit down, Bannon.”

He did as ordered, though not without a faint frown of his own. As always, he was uncomfortable with the captain’s sudden personability. It was a side of Haarot that had been hidden by his rank and his legend for years, and it made Bannon wonder that he was seeing it now. The rest of the company, he was pretty sure, wasn’t.

Haarot leaned his elbows on the desk and studied him for a moment. “First things first. We talked briefly about designating Third Phalanx as the company’s long-range reconnaissance and raid unit, but I don’t think that I made it official. I know the junior enlisted have been whispering about it ever since you got back; I think they’re getting better at spying than we were. Anyway, I should make it official before we press forward. If you’re willing, I’m going to designate Third Phalanx for any high-risk, long-range missions that come our way.”

“I could hardly say no, sir.” The risk was considerable, and Bannon had to acknowledge that. He was an officer now, tasked with the accomplishment of the mission but also responsible for the lives of the men under his command. Squandering them was nearly as bad as failing a mission. That was something else that was driven into the young men on the agoge field from an early age, since any one of them could be called upon later to become an officer.

Still, the part of him still connected to that eager young man who had stepped out onto the agoge field outside Thorsburg on Corvan Minor, taking one look back at his father’s scarred face and seeing the gleam in his one remaining eye, wanting so badly to make that broken, crippled, yet still strong man proud… that part of him was more than eager for the tasking. For the challenge. Age and bitter experience could never completely take that away.

Haarot nodded, then looked down at his desk. “I thought as much.” He stayed in that position for a moment, deepening Bannon’s frown. It looked almost as if the captain was struggling with something.

Finally he looked up, and Bannon quickly smoothed his expression. As much as he respected this man, he still didn’t want to be the object of his wrath, and that anger could sometimes be on a hair trigger.

“I told you that if you survived that mission, I might tell you why I picked you.” He paused once more. Bannon decided that silence was probably the best option at the moment.

Haarot nodded slightly, as if he’d just confirmed something. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.” His voice turned hard. “Understood?”

Bannon nodded.

Haarot took a deep breath and continued. His gaze seemed to shift to somewhere in the distance over Bannon’s shoulder as he spoke. “I was promoted because of my actions on New Jedda. The Council, and my commanders, saw bravery as the chief virtue, and therefore, because of what I had done, I was the best candidate. I have done what I could to uphold that faith.” He turned his eyes back to Bannon and the present. “What I have learned in the years since is that a leader must be capable of more than just prowess in battle, even a combat leader.” He sighed, ever so slightly, an odd expression from a man with a scar that curled his lip into a permanent sneer, who always seemed to wear a scowl as if it was just as much a part of his visage as the scar. “I am less capable at those things than I should be. I hope I am a wise enough man to recognize this.”

His gaze turned piercing. “You were a good squad sergeant, Bannon. You’ve been a better lieutenant. You’ve matured with the role. You’ve shown patience where it’s needed, and you’ve still accomplished your mission, whatever it may be. Before your skull gets too big for your helmet, I’m not saying that you’re really any better than your peers. But as a company commander, one of my responsibilities is to cultivate my subordinates.” He snorted, looking down at his desk. “If I can train one to be better than me, so much the better.

“You have potential. That’s why you’re getting the tougher assignments. I’ll try to teach you what I can. Maybe you’ll be in this position someday.” He raised an eyebrow and glared at Bannon. “Just don’t think it’s going to be tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

The ghost of what might have been a smile crossed Haarot’s face, then the customary scowl returned. “Now that you’re aware of where you stand, your phalanx’s next mission is going to be slightly less intense than the last one.” He tapped a few buttons on his data plate, then swiveled it around and shoved it across the desk. “Following the exposure of their operation, the Zolarians threw their commander to the fanged lopers to cover for themselves. For whatever reason, Command has seen fit to accept their excuses. So there has been a reshuffling of patrol zones, and the ‘peacekeeping’ mission continues, albeit with a new, two-mile-deep demilitarized zone between our zones.”

Bannon took the plate. “Does that mean we are no longer openly operating against the otuchans, sir?”

“No. Our primary mission remains the same. The otuchans are the aggressors, and the Zolarians haven’t done anything to actually end the war, just stop it—when they haven’t been running guns to escalate it against us—so our overall objective has not changed. However, that has little to do with what you’re going to be doing. The Zolarians have moved two companies to the vicinity of Surtau. That’s close to the demilitarized zone, and the village is small enough that the presence of two companies is suspicious. Your phalanx’s mission will be to get into the demilitarized zone, undetected, and conduct reconnaissance of Surtau and the Zolarians.”

His scowl deepened, the scar pulling his grimace into an even more hideous expression. “Their first attempt to use the otuchans to drive us off the planet failed. We need to know what the next will be. This world is too valuable as an outpost in our space for them to give up so easily.”

Bannon looked over the warning order on the plate. They had a couple of days, unless things suddenly accelerated. There hadn’t been any kinetic incidents there yet. “Understood, sir. And if they are preparing for another provocation?”

“Get us the information and be prepared for follow-on missions. You may be in a position for spoiling attacks, provided you can move quickly enough.”

Bannon stood. “I’ll have the phalanx warning order and support requests ready by the end of the day, sir.”

“Good. Dismissed.” Haarot looked up at him, and there was something in that glance that Bannon hadn’t seen before. Almost like the look he’d get from his father from time to time. “Death comes.”

“Let us go and meet it.”

CHAPTER 17

“Sir?” Keel was off duty, so it was Sergeant Osborne reporting. Tomas looked up from his command chair. As captain, he maintained a rather more strenuous schedule than he required from his crew.

“What is it, Sergeant Osborne?”

The young man, younger than Keel by several years and looking far more like a fresh-faced kid than the holder of the Lion Shield, held out a data plate. “There’s some odd activity coming from the Eurasian ships, sir. They’re making some orbital maneuvers that don’t make sense unless they’re going on the offensive.”

Tomas took the plate, though not without a glance at the holo tank where the situation map was projected. The maze of orbital trajectories and cloud of indicators that displayed everything within most of an astronomical unit, from starships to temporary satellites, was crowded and hard to take in sometimes, even for a man with his practice at it.

The tracking information on the data plate highlighted three of the new Eurasian starships, two of the brutish, dumbbell shapes and the third of the newer, slightly sleeker cylindrical variety, with a bulge amidships and a truncated cone at the nose. He thought that one was a Toktar Aubakirov-class, though he hadn’t kept up on the Eurasian ship designations that much. The Concordium had not moved into any of his patrol routes in the last few years.

All three ships had descended to lower orbits and were already rapidly catching up with one of the larger formations of Zolarian starships, albeit several miles beneath them.

They were the newest three of the nearly dozen Concordium ships that had arrived in the system since the Pavel Nakhimov had come through the wormhole emergence point. The orbitals were getting crowded, relatively speaking. Space was still big enough that none of the opposing starships were even within visual range of each other, except with telescopes, most of the time, even when they were above the same hemisphere.

Handing the data plate back to Osborne, he zoomed in on the holo display, his eyes narrowing. “Send an all-ships. Alert Level Three.” He kept watching as the three Eurasian starships continued to glide along their orbital paths. Their radiators were glowing on infrared, which meant their power plants were still running at full capacity. That was a warning sign all by itself, even without targeting systems being live or fighters deployed.

Acknowledgments from the other ships in the task group began to come through. Commander Fox was the overall leader of the Zhogalgan operation, but any starship commander had the authority to call an alert if he saw the need. The Corvanites had learned long before that waiting for the chain of command to approve an action often meant that that action was taken too late.

“Get the weapons systems armed, deploy fighters. Stay in this orbit for now and keep the targeting systems warmed up but passive.”

Tomas was acutely aware of just how dangerous this situation might get. The Eurasian Concordium was known for throwing its weight around, even in systems where that weight was minuscule. While it had grown, the Eurasian task group was still considerably outnumbered by the Zolarian and Corvanite starships. Still, that hadn’t stopped them from broadcasting warnings that Zhogalgan fell under Eurasian suzerainty just about every planetary rotation since the Pavel Nakhimov had arrived in the system—even though the planet was far closer to the Corvan system than to Earth, and the Concordium had utterly ignored the very existence of the Zhogalganites since their ship had first gone missing. The fact that they were now apparently conducting what looked like combat maneuvers, less than two hours after the last ultimatum, didn’t bode well.

He studied the tac plot, scowling. Commander Fox might disagree with his next course of action. In fact, he was fairly certain most of his fellow Corvanite commanders would. However, the task group’s directive—to not start a confrontation with the Zolarians—still stood. The Corvanites were there because Zhogalgan was technically in their sphere of influence and the Council wanted this to be a clear-cut case of defensive war. That meant pushing the Zolarians, but letting them fire the first shot.

He knew that the case could be made that that shot had already been fired. He didn’t believe that General Pleimelding had been acting on his own any more than the rest of his peers did. But he also didn’t want the Concordium to force the issue, and he figured that the Council would probably agree with him. This was between the Council and the “Grand Democracy.” Letting the Eurasians dictate how this war started was not a good idea.

He sighed. “Communications, open a hailing frequency to the GDZS Fraternity.” This was not going to be pleasant. He’d rather get into a space battle, but duty was what it was.

“Eurasians are deploying fighters.” Osborne was back at his station, monitoring the full sensor suite.

Sure enough, the tiny dots that were the Eurasian Foxglove and Fiend fighters were spreading out from the larger blips that were the starships. Starfighters had a different role in space combat than they did in atmosphere. They formed a cloud formation around their mothership, dispersing their weapons systems and making it far less likely that a single hit could be catastrophic. Even if the starship took a disabling strike, the fighters could continue to fight, and still survive, at least so long as a starship could still retrieve them, or they could land on the planet’s surface.

That was an escalation that couldn’t go unanswered, but they were also getting close enough to the Zolarian ships that painting the Concordium vessels with the Corvanite targeting systems that currently had line of sight—there were three different Corvanite task groups in orbit, with three more Zolarian squadrons in slightly different orbits—could be mistaken as an attempt to paint the Zolarians themselves. Then things would really get out of control.

He had to contact the Fraternity first.

The signal finally connected, though there was no holo, only audio. “This is the GDZS Fraternity, Commander Dieskau speaking.” The Zolarians had different ranks for spacers and ground troops, for some reason.

“Commander, this is Captain Tomas of the Thunderer. You have Eurasian ships closing on you from a lower orbit, and they have just deployed fighters. We are deploying our own fighters and activating targeting systems. Be advised that they are not directed at you.” Though they should be, after what you people have already done here.

There was a long pause. The voice that came over the comm shortly thereafter still sounded haughty. “We are keeping them under observation.” The circuit was severed.

Tomas shook his head. It would serve them right if they lost a starship or two to the Eurasians. I shouldn’t have bothered to warn them.

“General quarters.” That command would be transmitted throughout the task group, and in his visual displays, which were suspended to either side of his command chair, he could already see the Relentless and the Dauntless launching fighters, the Dragon 27s pushing out from the starships’ flanks on thrusters, their drives still quiescent.

Tomas had flown one of those—well, the Dragon 26s, anyway—long ago. Drive tech had improved, but there were still sharp limits on a starfighter’s delta-V. Preserving the precious reaction mass for when it was really needed was important.

Experiments with remote vehicles and even AI, to reduce onboard mass and stretch range, had not worked well, especially not against modern jamming.

He felt the thumps through the hull as the Thunderer’s own fighter contingent deployed, the arrowhead shapes drifting out into a star formation around the ship. By the time they brought themselves to a relative halt, the fighters would be spread out over a sphere ten miles in radius, with the Thunderer in the center.

The other starships in the task group would be at the center of similar formations.

“Activate full targeting array, arm all weapons. Tell the fighters to stand by. First Squadron, concentrate on their fighters, Second, your focus is the starship.” He tapped several controls, making sure the instructions were clearly delineated on tac displays across the task group, including those of his own satellite fighters. “Target the Ganbaatar.”

The active targeting aboard the Thunderer was state of the art, and the lidar and radar were strong enough to almost ring the target ship’s hull. The active measures weren’t always necessary, unless the electronic countermeasures or decoying was too strong, but occasionally they served a double purpose. Like now.

“Fighters are turning on their axes to face us.” Osborne didn’t need to say that, since Tomas could see it on his own tac display.

“The Ganbaatar is hailing us, sir.”

For a moment, Tomas was tempted to let the Eurasians sweat. On the other hand… “Put them through, Sergeant.”

This time there was a holo. The image was of a short, thickset man in a high-collared, dark-blue uniform with red accents. “This is Captain Second Rank Golytsin of the Ganbaatar. The continued targeting of my ship will be considered a hostile act.”

Tomas wasn’t having it. “Your maneuvers and deployment of fighters can already be considered just that, Captain Second Rank. You are maneuvering on peacekeeping forces and have deployed weapons. We are taking precautions, especially given your belligerent broadcasts over the last several local days.” He leaned back in his seat, though his restraint harness wouldn’t allow for much movement, and crossed his arms. “If your intentions are peaceful, I suggest you recall your fighters and return to an orbit which will not bring you unduly close to another nation’s ships, particularly not at a high relative velocity.”

The captain of the Ganbaatar stared out of the holo at him for a long few seconds, hostility written in every line of his face and posture. Finally he looked back at his own tac display, as Osborne sent a text notification that floated in the holo tank just over Golytsin’s shoulder. The Zolarian ships have also targeted the Eurasian attack group.

The anger in the Eurasian commander’s eyes was even more intense when he looked up, but he was caught, and he knew it. “We were conducting contingency drills. There is no need for such open hostility.”

“Your tone and reaction tend to contradict that, Captain Second Rank.” Tomas knew that he could probably just call the man “Captain,” but a perverse part of him enjoyed the potential antagonism, especially as he became more confident that the Eurasians knew they were outnumbered, outgunned, and would be turned into scrap and irradiated meat if they so much as turned on a targeting array. “Recall your fighters and return to a regular orbit. Now.”

“This bullying and aggression are unacceptable.” By now, Tomas was sure that Golytsin was blustering to save face. The Eurasian contingent was far too small to challenge both the Zolarians and the Corvanites, and from their vector, it looked to him as if they’d been maneuvering on the Zolarians and expecting the Corvanites to therefore sit things out. It still didn’t make a lot of sense, but with the deaths of thousands of men and women hanging in the balance, Tomas couldn’t afford to overanalyze it. “Formal protests will be lodged with your commanders and your government, Captain.”

“Lodge away.” Tomas’s voice was hard. “Just get out of my gunsights.”

The holo vanished without a close-out, but that didn’t bother Tomas that much. He was fairly sure they had the Eurasians checked, even though the Corvanite ships were falling behind the Eurasian formation, thanks to the difference in orbits. Even if they went over the planet’s limb, the Zolarians would still have good shots on them, and as much as Tomas might dislike the Zolarians, he didn’t think they’d balk at shooting down the Eurasians if they turned openly hostile.

In the tac plot, the dots of the Foxgloves and Fiends were already starting to drift back toward their motherships. The starships themselves weren’t altering their vectors yet, but they would wait until the fighters were all back aboard first.

“Stay at general quarters until they’ve returned to a higher orbit and are no longer threatening any of the other formations.” Tomas took a deep breath. “Keep monitoring the other Eurasian ships as well, and I shouldn’t need to say that we should keep an eye on the Zolarians, too.” He wouldn’t put it past them to try to make a move on the Corvanites again while all eyes and sensors were on the Eurasians.

Something prompted him to check, but the Uhuran, Columbian, and Riin ships hadn’t reacted to the little orbital drama at all. He didn’t doubt that they’d been watching. Especially the Columbians and the Riin.

He watched the Eurasian ships, and not only those visible from his ship. The Corvanite formations were spread out enough that they had data, if not visuals, on the group on the other side of the planet. His eyes kept moving to the Zolarian squadrons, though.

This business will get out of control.

***

Tomas’s watch was nearing its end. Keel was back on duty, and the Eurasian ships had finally entered a higher orbit, maintaining a healthy distance from both Corvanite and Zolarian starships. The task group had stepped down from General Quarters, but they were still on Alert Level Three. Combat was possible, and they needed to be ready for it.

The problem with a situation like this was that a laser could hit a starship before anyone had enough warning to activate countermeasures and turn the enemy’s targeting to hash. The orbitals could turn into a savage free-for-all in seconds.

“Keel.” The longer the calm lasted, and the more Tomas was able to think over what had happened, the more his suspicions grew. The Eurasians might be arrogant savages with delusions of some historical right to rule half the human race, but they weren’t stupid. Certainly not stupid enough to think that they could pull off a sneak attack like that. And despite the six ships from Shangxi that had arrived just before the incident—they were still on their deceleration path, having just passed turnover six hours before—he was sure there weren’t enough Eurasian ships in the system to back them up.

Keel clunked across the deck, the reports of his mag boots accentuated by the metal leg that one was permanently attached to. He handed over a data plate. “Several shuttles were launched toward the surface at about the same time they started to deploy fighters, sir.” The grizzled sergeant was ahead of him, and Tomas appreciated it. “They haven’t lifted again, and there was so much going on that the records don’t pinpoint where they might have landed. It appears that they were heading for several of the frontier settlements closest to the Zolarians and the otuchans.”

Tomas grimaced as he checked the sensor records. Sure enough, half a dozen dots—two shuttles per starship—had dipped toward the planet’s surface just before the confrontation had begun. “If the Zolarians couldn’t start an open war, then the Eurasians will.” He handed the plate back to Keel. “Make sure that gets to Commander Fox and the other starship captains.”

Keel didn’t turn to go. “There’s something else, sir.” He brought up another display on the plate and handed it across without another word.

Tomas felt a chill as he looked over what Keel had found. The same bursts of Cherenkov radiation had been observed, several times, during the confrontation with the Eurasians. They’d bounced from the moon, to somewhere just over the north and south poles, then back to the moon again.

The only data came from the Thunderer. Tomas hadn’t told his fellow captains about the originals, since he was fairly sure that they’d be dismissed as echoes of the Pavel Nakhimov’s wormhole emergence. These definitely weren’t echoes.

He handed the plate back thoughtfully. “Any theories, Sergeant Keel?”

The other man took the plate back with his metal hand, his eyes hooded. “None I’d care to give voice to, sir.”

Tomas could only nod. There were plenty of stories and spacer legends floating around the galaxy, but a people as hardheaded as the Corvanites tended to look on them with a disapproving eye. Sharing stories about ghost ships and mysterious aliens no one had ever seen—especially deep within the human constellation—might even ground a holder of the Lion Shield.

“Fair enough. Maintain monitoring and keep me posted.”

Keel nodded, pivoted, and headed back to his station.

Tomas frowned as he studied the tac plot. What if there was another factor at play here? One beyond human or otuchan experience?

CHAPTER 18

Draven surveyed the destruction from where he stood next to Captain Thill. It had taken a disaster like this to get the company commander out of the command blower.

Smoke drifted down the line of light transports. This hadn’t been a combat patrol; it had been a logistics convoy. Ground convoys had proven to be less expensive than shuttle hops, which was why the Zolarians had largely turned to using them. Only this time, it had proven to be a liability.

“This wasn’t otuchans.” Lieutenant Second Class Evering made this pronouncement as though it were a profound observation.

Draven had thoughts, but since it was an officer who’d spoken, he kept them to himself. Somewhat to his surprise, Captain Thill said almost exactly what he was thinking.

“That’s very insightful, Lieutenant, considering that we are over a hundred kilometers from the DMZ and there has been no trace of otuchan activity for nearly two hundred kilometers from this spot in thousands of hours.” The captain didn’t turn toward his subordinate, but the acid in his voice was biting.

Six air-cushion trucks had slewed across the road, and two were still burning fiercely. The impacts that Draven could see looked like combat drone and laser strikes. These weren’t crude, local improvised weapons.

“With your leave, sir, I’ll check on how the platoons are doing.” Draven didn’t want or need to be standing here while the officers debated what had happened. His men and women were either out on the perimeter or sifting through the wreckage, trying to find survivors. Standing around listening to increasingly detached speculation wasn’t getting the work done.

Thill waved a hand dismissively. Under different circumstances, Draven might have raged a little at that, especially given the gap in their experience. He’d been soldiering when Thill had been in his teens, partying and living it up on Zolah. As it was, it just got him away from the officers and doing real work, so he ignored the high-handedness of the gesture and got down to it.

Two of the soldiers from Fourth Platoon were dragging a charred body out of one of the grounded, scorched blowers. Draven looked down at the remains, knowing there was nothing to be done. From the looks of the blower, even if the crewman had had his hardsuit on—which he should have—it probably wouldn’t have saved his life.

“Where are the survivors?” While the destruction was considerable, it wasn’t total. There had to be survivors.

The private third class who had just set down the body was still staring down at it. Probably about to get sick in her helmet. She’d learn just what a bad idea that was. But they’d been on Zhogalgan long enough to have seen this sort of thing a few times, so Draven wasn’t that sympathetic at the moment.

“Private. The survivors.”

Shakily, the private pointed toward the rear of the column. Not where Draven would have put the casualty collection point, but he supposed it had to go somewhere, and maybe they were more sheltered from the scenes of carnage getting pulled out of the wrecks.

He started that way, though not without another look at the terrain around them as he flexed his armored fingers around his rifle.

They were a long way from the frozen tundra of the company’s last operation. This was one of the “green zones,” though looking at the low, spatulate “trees” and crawling undergrowth, he wasn’t sure how much it merited the designation. It was close enough to the Kekbor River that there was some sporadic agriculture in this area, even occasionally outside of the otherwise mandatory greenhouse domes. The small settlement of Kishkentai Oezen lay about ten kilometers upstream, while a handful of hardy families had struck out to form the even tinier village of Laily Kol.

The ambulance blower had come up from the rear and had grounded, resting on its skirts with its ramp open, surrounded by most of Third Platoon’s vehicles, their turrets trained outward, looking for threats. That there were such threats was pretty obvious, despite the dead quiet of their surroundings at the moment. Yet they were far enough from the demilitarized zone that Draven suspected a few of the junior troops would succumb to the temptation to complacency even in the face of the burning vehicles behind him.

Half a dozen men and women in Zolarian utilities—only a couple in hardsuits like they were supposed to be—sat on the ground or on equipment cases near the ambulance, mostly looking traumatized. Two were trying to help the medics, who looked like they needed the help. There had been more survivors than had appeared at first glance, and not all of them were doing too well.

One of the helpers, aiding with burn packs on another of the wounded, looked collected enough to maybe be able to answer some questions.

“Sergeant?” He stood next to her, looking down at where she was putting the finishing touches on the burn pack. The kid at her feet had blisters and charred skin all over his back, and it would be a long time before he grew any hair on the back of his head again.

She looked up, clearly irritated, until she saw the stripes on Draven’s pauldron. Then her expression was shuttered, though he was pretty sure she was still just as irritated. Having to answer a senior noncom’s questions instead of helping people had to grind on her, but right now the intelligence was more important than one more set of hands at casualty care.

She straightened up, assuming the position of parade rest. “First Sergeant. Sergeant Second Class Kimball. What can I help you with?”

“Come with me.” This wasn’t a conversation that needed to happen in the middle of triage and casualty care. He turned and led the way toward Third Platoon’s command blower.

Just before the grounded vehicle, Draven stopped and turned around. The movement caught the young Sergeant Second Class by surprise, and she skidded to a halt, once again stiffening.

“At ease, Sergeant Kimball. I’m not blaming you or anyone else for this. I just need to know exactly what happened.” He looked around at the scene significantly. “We are a long way from otuchan territory, and almost as far from the new Corvanite zone. This is serious, and Command is going to need to know everything we can find out. So, report.”

Kimball looked down at the dirt for a second, probably gathering her thoughts. Draven had his visor polarized, so he showed no expression even as he swept the killzone with his eyes again, watching his HUD for any threat indicators. Something was very wrong here, but that was starting to describe this entire deployment.

“Our route was supposed to be a big loop. Resupply for both the humanitarian aid packages and the combat outpost outside of Zhasylalkan. That was going to be our next stop after Laily Kol.” The sergeant stared at something over his shoulder, her gaze far away. “Just about a hundred meters from here, the first drone started to shadow us. Nobody paid much attention to it. We’d had overwatch drones shadowing us off and on since we left Outpost Regula.”

Draven frowned slightly. In addition to the lack of hardsuits—mandated for any movement outside the outpost by General Pleimelding, a mandate that had been upheld by General Greaney—they apparently hadn’t been attentive enough to security to notice that a drone shadowing their convoy wasn’t Zolarian. At least, Draven presumed it wasn’t, since some of the damage he’d seen back there was consistent with combat drone strikes.

“Then the first drone hit us.” She pointed to where the lead vehicle was a twisted mass of metal and burned flesh. “Sergeant Wray’s blower just… exploded.” She shuddered.

It was apparent that these were rear-echelon support troops, who hadn’t seen much of the real war since they’d made landfall. That was still possible, since most of the violence had been between human and otuchan. Their complacency had been come by somewhat honestly, since this wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the “front,” as much as there was any such thing.

“The fire from the side of the road started then,” Kimball continued. “Something drew a glowing line across the blower in front of us, and part of it just blew off. There was gunfire, explosions, and then more drones were diving on us and killing blowers.”

“Did you see any of the attackers?” That was more important than a blow-by-blow account of the order in which the Zolarian blowers had died. “Did you see how they were dressed, how they were equipped?”

“Not at first. I was just trying to stay alive. Our blower was hit, but it was one of the lasers, not a drone. It blew off part of the skirts and we lost the air cushion. Sergeant Taylor told everyone to get out, and I did, just before a drone hit the top.” She pointed toward a blower lying canted on the road, partway off the barely graded strip of grayish Zhogalganite dirt. “Sergeant Taylor died in there.”

She was wringing her hands now, which was not the proper position of parade rest, but Draven let it go. This woman had been through hell, and he was making her revisit it. The least he could do was be a little understanding.

“I got into the ditch and took cover. There were dozens more drones in the sky. I… I stayed down there for a long time. I could hear the shooting and the screaming. A few more explosions. None of them came for me, though, and I finally looked up as the fire started to die down.”

“What did you see?”

Kimball seemed to be searching her memory. “There were men coming out of the cover on the side of the road. Most of them weren’t wearing uniforms or armor. Almost all of them, in fact.” The trauma seemed to be receding a little in her memory as she tried to analyze what she’d seen to give Draven a proper report. “They were wearing civilian clothing. The local stuff. I think they were locals.”

That did not bode well, though Draven had to admit that it had probably become inevitable as soon as the Corvanites had broadcast that so-called interrogation of the otuchan phratry leader across the planet. The locals saw only the Zolarians arming their mortal enemies and the Corvanites pledging to defend them. Of course the enmity was going to turn toward the one faction actually trying to stop the bloodshed.

That did raise the question of where the locals were getting these sorts of weapons, but that was a very short list. “You said almost all of them. Were there others?”

She nodded. “There were a couple of men who didn’t look like the others. I only got a glimpse, but they were wearing uniforms. Armor.”

“Were they Corvanites?” It only stood to reason.

The sergeant shook her head. “No. They didn’t look anything like the Corvanites. Their uniforms were different, and they were wearing more armor than I’ve ever seen the Corvanites wear here.”

That was interesting. “What kind of uniforms? What kind of armor?” He realized he was getting into the weeds, and this was a job for Intelligence, but if they needed to be ready for a Corvanite ambush here, just outside of Laily Kol, then they needed every bit of information they could get.

That was what he told himself anyway, while realizing that, for the most part, he was curious. This ambush was weird. The locals hadn’t dared go after any of the peacekeeping forces so far. Their primary concern had been the otuchans, and they were few, dirt poor, and untrained.

The sergeant’s brow furrowed. She was clearly trying hard to recollect as many details as she could, and Draven waited patiently. He knew all too well what the post-combat adrenaline dump could do to the human memory. He still remembered, if faintly, trying to reconstruct his own first contact, on Davern, many years ago.

“They were wearing green, I know that. It was sort of a dark green. Their armor wasn’t as all-covering as ours… they weren’t wearing full hardsuits. Just chest plates, pauldrons, greaves, and helmets. The helmets looked wider than ours or the Corvanites’. Like they flared a little down from the top. They had solid faceplates with vision slits above them, too.”

Draven frowned as he listened to the description. It definitely didn’t sound like Corvanites to him. But who…

Then he remembered the intel reports about the Eurasian Concordium ships in-system, and while the reports had been vague, apparently there had been some confrontation in orbit the other day. He wasn’t up to speed on Concordium uniforms and equipment, but something about the green and the faceplates sounded Eurasian to him.

He’d have to get this information to Intel as soon as possible.

As if this war zone isn’t already complicated enough.

CHAPTER 19

“Understood, sir.” Bannon suppressed a sigh. “We’ll be on the move to the rendezvous point within the next ten minutes.”

“Good. Haarot out.” The captain disappeared from the crawler’s small holo tank, and Bannon took off his helmet to rub his eyes.

One of the drawbacks of being the captain’s go-to special mission force was that the phalanx had to be ready to drop what they were doing and reset on a moment’s notice. That had just happened, and now they were going to have to take some steps that might compromise their earlier mission.

The phalanx had taken three days to get into position on the massif above Surtau, watching the gathering force of what was now a full Zolarian battalion, three companies of mechanized infantry—not that the turtles used any other kind—a company of light tanks, and a full artillery battery. It looked very much like the Zolarians were getting ready for an offensive, but the objective was unclear.

Now, though, the phalanx was getting called off to link up with drop shuttles and transfer to the north of the Zhogalganite human settlements, where there were reports not only of Eurasian drop shuttles, but also attacks on Zolarian peacekeeping forces.

“Listen up, Third Phalanx.” Bannon got on the all-unit comm channel. “We just got recalled. We need to head north. We have a new mission. Apparently the locals have started teaming up with the Eurasians to attack the turtles.”

“Why are we worried about it?” Hern was the natural candidate to voice the obvious question. He’d gotten far more vocal since he’d become Bannon’s corporal. “They’ve got plenty of reason to resent the turtles. Let the Zolarians take care of themselves.”

“Not our concern.” Ordinarily, Bannon preferred to pass as much information to his men as he could, but in this case, he simply didn’t have it. He didn’t know why Commander Fox had ordered the 102nd Company to look into the situation, and though he had his suspicions, he wasn’t going to voice them over the comm. “We have our orders, so we’re going to carry them out. Everyone needs to be broken down and loaded up in five. Our RV point is on the south side of the mesa, so we need to move.”

He got the acknowledgments he needed and returned to the job at hand. As phalanx leader, he had to leave the rest of the movement to the rendezvous to his NCOs. There were times when an officer needed to be out in front, leading by example and being the first one to throw himself into the task. That was usually in combat, or in particularly rough work. Sometimes, though—particularly in a short-fuse operation like this—he had to prioritize, and that meant he needed to have a plan put together before they lifted. Even if it was rough.

They had a short timeframe to reach the landing zone and load up on the drop shuttles, which were probably even now prepping to launch from the Thunderer.

He had plenty of questions about what Captain Haarot had told him, but there would be time enough for that afterward.

***

“Drone contact.” That had been the warning that Bannon had been dreading ever since he’d put the word out that they needed to move. It had been almost inevitable, this close to a major Zolarian concentration of forces.

“Keep an eye on it,” Bannon replied, “but do not shoot at it.”

That should have been common sense, but something told him he probably needed to say it anyway. He’d heard just enough over the comms since the warning order and the subsequent load-up and movement away from their observation post on the massif that he knew his men were a little punchy about getting jerked around. And they had plenty of reason—from personal experience—to dislike the Zolarians, especially when they were getting spied on.

Of course, they were spying on the Zolarians, too, and were well outside their agreed-upon area of responsibility. All the more reason to keep this from escalating any more than absolutely necessary. Especially since they were vastly outnumbered.

Something was chiming inside the crawler. “We’re getting a comm signal on the joint operations net.” Ollan sounded annoyed, but then, he always sounded annoyed that he had to actually talk to people, even when that included his commander.

Bannon grimaced. He’d been hoping to move fast enough to avoid this. “Ignore it.”

Ollan grunted and went back to monitoring the remote turret. Bannon, while he had no intention of responding, switched his helmet comm to the joint operations net just to see what the turtles were saying.

“… say again, you are in the Zolarian area of control. Halt and identify yourselves. Any hostile act will be met with deadly force. Any attempt to flee will be considered a hostile act.”

He shut it off. Nothing new, if slightly more aggressive than he’d come to expect from the Zolarians. It didn’t answer what they were doing out here in such force, but it told him—and would tell the intelligence people he passed the information along to—that there was definitely something off going on out here. The Zolarians had been forced to play nice by the exposure of their arms trafficking to the otuchans, but they hadn’t given up on attempting to drive the Corvanites off the planet, thereby gaining an outpost entirely too close to Corvan Major.

“More drones incoming.” Ollan wasn’t getting excited, or at least he didn’t sound that way. In fact, he sounded more upset than anything else, probably because he just wanted to get off the massif. The sergeant wasn’t as keen on action as most Corvanites, which made it even more likely that he’d never rise farther than he already had. He did, however, have a finely tuned sense of self-preservation. “Sir, some of them are combat drones.”

“Maintain your stance.” Bannon knew that, technically, the Zolarians had all the reason they needed to open fire. The AORs had been strictly laid out, and Third Phalanx of the 102nd Company were well outside of theirs. He also knew that they’d need to seriously justify firing on their “fellow peacekeepers,” and that if they did, their protestations of innocence would fall apart. Every bit of intel he’d been given pointed to the Zolarians trying to run this takeover as quietly as possible, trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the Corvanites that might invite open war.

Of course, with combat drones pacing his crawlers, that intel seemed awfully tenuous and speculative.

He glanced at the new, brushed-metal box that had been installed in his crawler before they’d left the base for this mission. It was new tech, untested in the field, and he therefore didn’t trust it, but that was another consequence of being the tip-of-the-spear phalanx. Their mission in the Zolarian zone was an ideal chance to test the new jammer out, and so, with a deep breath, he activated it.

Electronic warfare had become ever more important as technology had progressed. Automated and remote systems had become more common, and so the means to disrupt them had similarly advanced. It had become an invisible version of the continuous race between firepower and armor.

There was no hum, no lights, no visible indicator that the device was doing anything. Ollan let out a surprised grunt, though, which told Bannon that something had happened. It took a lot to get that kind of reaction out of Ollan.

Bannon checked the holo display. Sure enough, the four closest drones, all Zolarian XR-71 combat drones, had just lost control. One was spiraling toward the dirt, its scrambled control program trying to soft land it so that it preserved the drone. The other three were simply plunging out of the sky, and even as he watched, two of them smashed onto the rocks and detonated. The last hit but didn’t explode, shattering into a hundred pieces of synthetic and metal.

The drop shuttles were visible already, descending out of the sky on tails of fire. They’d be on the ground in only a few more minutes. And they probably already had targeting data, just in case.

These next few minutes were going to be crucial. If the Zolarians decided to make it a fight, they were going to launch a new wave of drones and probably start moving their combat hovercraft out to try to cut the phalanx off before they could reach the other side of the massif. Bannon kept his eyes on the holo display, the crawler bumping and swaying around him, his driver pushing the vehicle as hard as he could toward the rendezvous.

Sure enough, what looked like two platoons of air-cushion infantry fighting vehicles rose on their bubbles of air and started to slide out of the staging area. Whatever they were doing here, they weren’t going to just sit on their hands. Maybe their commander thought that they had all the justification they needed, since Third Phalanx was well outside the Corvanite zone and had just jammed four of their drones into oblivion. Bannon neither knew nor cared. His mission had shifted, and now his focus needed to be on getting his phalanx to those drop shuttles.

“Rear vehicles, orient turrets to the rear and be prepared to engage.” That was SOP, but one thing Bannon had learned over years of combat leadership was that sometimes even the obvious needed to be stated. Not because his men were stupid or incompetent, but because in the heat of the moment, sometimes the obvious got overlooked. With those drop shuttles in sight, his men might not be focused where they needed to be. There was a lot going on, a lot of factors that demanded their attention.

The drop shuttles were landing. A pair of Dragon 27s roared overhead, high enough to be out of range of most ground-based weapons—and their jammers would be doing double duty to keep any missiles or laser trackers from homing in on them—but low enough to make it clear that they could engage the Zolarians if things got ugly. Once again, they weren’t where they were supposed to be, but under these circumstances, might made right.

The Corvanites got aboard the drop shuttles in near-record time, and Bannon had barely gotten a head count and gotten strapped in before the drives rumbled up to full power, pushing him down into his acceleration couch. The shuttles pulled for the sky, leaving the Zolarians angry and frustrated—but so far, not at war.

CHAPTER 20

The drop shuttles came out of the night, descending from the deep-black, star-studded sky on tails of fire, shaking the ground with the roar of their drives. They hit hard, landing jacks depressing deeply on their hydraulics, their ramps falling open with thundering booms.

The shuttles were certainly capable of much softer landings, and the swift ramp drop was awfully hard on the equipment, but there was a message to be sent.

They’d landed in a crescent around the south side of the village, and even as the locals started awake at the thunderous noise, the combat crawlers were rolling out, moving quickly to cut off any exit. The phalanx had the entire village locked down in a matter of minutes, with every road or path in or out covered by autocannons and combat lasers.

Bannon’s crawler advanced toward the small square that formed the center of town, a crude approximation of an Orthodox church facing the larger, bulkier town hall across the open space. The crawler ground its way right into the middle of that open space, coming to a halt with a rumble, the turret pivoting from side to side, always almost pointed at the town hall.

The ramp lowered, and Bannon stalked out, dressed in his full hardsuit. It had spent almost the entire deployment packaged in its case on the inside of the crawler, but he’d decided—after Captain Haarot had suggested it over comms—that the situation called for it. If only for the intimidation value.

He wasn’t unarmed, either. His rifle was held across his body, and he’d brought his sidearm along as well. There was a method behind that, too, especially since he hadn’t carried a pistol since making landfall.

Walking out in front of the crawler, he crossed his armored arms and looked around, tapping the control on his gauntlet to amplify his voice. “Bring the mayor and everyone else out here! All adults in this village!” The translator rendered his words in Russo-Uralic. The locals used a different dialect, but Russo-Uralic was usually understood.

Hern and Killian already had their squads moving from house to house, guns up and ready for action, beating on doors and demanding that the whole village assemble at the square. They were under orders not to kick the doors in and drag anyone out, but that might change depending on what happened over the next few minutes.

The mayor was identifiable by the fact that he’d put on a suit coat over his undershirt and homespun trousers, though it was rumpled and wasn’t exactly on straight. None of the inhabitants of Zhogalgan were overweight, and the mayor was no exception, being so spare of frame that he looked almost skeletal, flyaway gray hair around a considerable bald spot on the top of his head.

“What is meaning of this? We have done nothing.” The man spoke rough, accented Russo-Uralic. He probably couldn’t speak Anglisch at all.

He also wasn’t looking directly at Bannon, which was a clue that he was lying.

Not that Bannon needed to interrogate him. He’d seen the intel. Seen the orbital feeds from the Inflexible showing the Eurasian shuttle landing just outside the village, the arms moving in, the strike force moving south toward the Zolarian peacekeeping forces. The Eurasians hadn’t tried to hide it, and the locals probably hadn’t even thought to.

“Where is the Eurasian contingent?” Bannon kept his voice flat, his hands still on his weapon. He wasn’t pointing it at anyone, not yet, but the threat was there, and it was unmistakable.

He expected the mayor to beg and dissemble. He was a little surprised when the man straightened, standing a little bit taller, and finally looked Bannon in the faceplate, defiance in his eyes despite the squint against the floodlights from the crawler’s turret.

“Why should I tell you, Corvanite? The Eurasians have offered us weapons and given us the chance to punish those who armed our deadly enemies. Can you men of Corvan say the same?” The old man’s voice quavered, but he did his utmost to present a steely mien under Bannon’s cold, faceless stare.

Bannon wasn’t here to argue. “You will bring out the Eurasian operatives, or we will level this village, one house at a time, until they are found.” He didn’t need to even try to avoid blinking, since his visor showed nothing but a flat, dark surface to the mayor’s eyes—but the frost in his voice vied with the chill in the night air. “Trust me, they have put you in a far worse position than the otuchans ever did.”

The mayor was wavering. As more and more Corvanite troops came into the square, spreading out to keep the small crowd of locals covered—with still more beating on doors in the dark around the outside of the village—the old man was no doubt wondering just whether his defiance was going to result in the loss of everything he held dear. The phalanx barely numbered forty-two men, but when those forty-two men were armed to the teeth and moving professionally from door to door, they could appear much more formidable to frightened people who had just been rousted out of bed.

Bannon didn’t look around, but he could tell that at least some of his men had come up to flank him, just from the sounds to either side and the way that the mayor looked to his right, then his left. The weight of the threat in the air was getting tangible.

The mayor licked his lips. An older woman had joined him, and several more villagers were being herded around the town hall behind him. His eyes moved from side to side like those of a trapped animal looking for an escape route. His defiance wilted in the face of Bannon’s implacable demands—and in the face of Corvanite rifles held easily in gauntleted hands, positioned where they could easily be snapped to shoulders and fired.

“They are armed,” the mayor said, “and they will not let us simply come and get them.” He was temporizing, trying to avoid being backed further into the corner where he was already stuck.

“Then tell us where they are, and we will get them.” Bannon hadn’t taken an impromptu suborbital hop from an important mission in the south just to get brushed off by a local hetman who had already been stupid enough to introduce another wild card into this explosive situation.

The older man wilted even more, his shoulders collapsing and his head sinking toward his chest. He looked to the older woman by his side, and when she nodded silently, he lifted a shaking finger and pointed at a large, barnlike structure at the edge of the village. “They are staying there. They’re probably alerted by now.”

“No doubt.”

Bannon turned on his heel and started toward the indicated building. He switched to hand and arm signals to tell Hern’s and Killian’s squads to move in on the building, closing in at the corners and using what cover they could. He didn’t doubt that the mayor was right, and if they didn’t approach this carefully, they were going to take casualties prying the Eurasians out of there.

Bannon could just have the door breached and then let Hern lob grenades in through the opening until everything in the building was dead. If this were a straightforward clearing operation, that was precisely what he would do. But his instructions from Captain Haarot were clear. They needed to take the Eurasians alive if possible. They weren’t necessarily going to stay that way for long, but again, there was a message to be sent.

Fortunately, while Corvanite combat doctrine emphasized the human aspects of war and tactics, they weren’t averse to using tech where it was warranted.

The two squads moved in on the building, spreading out to the corners, with Hern sending a fireteam toward the back to make sure that none of their targets made a run for it. The building was much like all the others, if bigger. Mostly built of native brick, it had a few high, narrow windows, which were probably as small as they were due to a lack of materials. It wasn’t as if anywhere on Zhogalgan got hot enough that keeping the sun out was important. The big rollup doors were flanked by smaller pedestrian doors. These were the ones that Hern and Killian moved on as Bannon stalked toward the barnlike structure plainly visible in the splash of the crawler’s floodlights, his hardsuit turning him into an angel of death walking toward the Eurasians’ redoubt.

There was risk here. If the Eurasians opened fire, he had no illusions that his hardsuit made him invincible. He’d buried too many comrades who’d been in hardsuits when they’d been killed.

While the warehouse was in shadow, his helmet’s advanced night vision gave him a clear enough view to see movement in the windows. There was a second floor, or at least a balcony, and their targets were awake and alert. He felt the tension ratchet up, and he almost snatched up his own rifle and opened fire, if only to drive the observers back from the windows.

But then Hern and Clarke, one of Killian’s squad, breached the two front pedestrian doors. Small strips of adaptive explosive automatically counted down from five seconds as soon as the activation strips were pressed, and they blew the doors in with cracks that reverberated through the entire village.

The shock waves shook the warehouse hard enough that one of the windows cracked. The Corvanites didn’t hesitate, but immediately tossed in the omnibangers. On official documents, they were “disruption grenades,” but they’d been called “omnibangers” by the troops ever since they’d been introduced while Bannon had been a young recruit on the agoge field.

The twin thunderclaps finished the destruction of the windows, sending fragments of actual glass tumbling to the street below. Smoke billowed out of the doors even as the Corvanites rushed in, their weapons up. The “smoke” was actually a conductive mist that aided the electromagnetic pulse that pumped out with the blast and the flash, disrupting comms and targeting systems. The pulse had died by the time the Corvanite soldiers were inside, but the damage had been done to the Eurasians.

Bannon broke into a sprint as soon as the omnibangers went off, and he was right behind Hern as the bulk of First Squad went in. The mist was already starting to disperse. Corvanite optics tech was pretty advanced, and Bannon could see the faint heat silhouettes of the Eurasians, three of them down on their knees, apparently having eaten the full force of the omnibangers. The others were up and had weapons in their hands, but they couldn’t see much. Even if Concordium tech was on the same level with Corvanite—and Bannon didn’t think it was—the EMP would have scrambled everything, at least for a few moments.

He went past the three on their knees and slammed into the nearest Eurasian who was still on his feet. His rifle butt smashed against the man’s helmet and might actually have cracked the faceplate as it sent the man sprawling. Killian was next to him, battering the fifth man into submission. The others already had the incapacitated soldiers disarmed and were binding their hands as Hern swept past with a small fireteam of soldiers to check the rest of the warehouse.

The mist was clearing even more, and Bannon got a good look as he ripped the Eurasian’s rifle out of his hands and kicked his feet out from under him. There were stacks of containers and what looked like partitioned locker spaces along both side walls, leaving a clear space running through the middle to the rollup doors where trucks could get in and out. There was also a balcony running around the outside of the warehouse at the second-story level, and as Bannon secured his prisoner, he could feel the two Eurasians up there who had been looking out the windows. They hadn’t opened fire yet, but it was going to take a moment for Hern to get up there.

Fortunately, he’d trained his men well. Lewiski and Alexius were on the flanks, their backs covered by some of the big containers, their weapons trained on that upper level. When Bannon had his prisoner secured and turned to look, he saw that the two Eurasians up there by the windows had recovered enough to see what was happening—and see the six-millimeter CR-196 muzzles trained on them. One had his hands up. The other was still shaken, leaning against the wall with his hands against his ears. He hadn’t been wearing his helmet, and he’d probably had his eardrums shattered by the concussions of the omnibangers.

“Warehouse is clear, sir,” Hern reported.

“Bring them down.” Bannon levered his captive back to his feet. The man swayed, but Bannon’s grip on his upper arm was like iron. “Bring them all out into the square.”

As he propelled his own prisoner, he noticed the man was wearing the pips of a Concordium Kapitan. This must be an important mission to bring the equivalent of a company commander down to the surface, this far out from Earth.

The Corvanites dragged the Eurasians out into the square and forced them to their knees in the light of the floods off the front of Bannon’s crawler. Bannon took a step back from the line of bound Eurasian soldiers, looking past them at the gathered locals.

“You said the Eurasians have helped you more than we have.” His voice echoed off the bricks. “If they had simply brought you weapons, that might have been a defensible position. We do not deny that self-defense is a natural right.” He let his tone harden. “Yet you used those weapons, doubtless at the behest of these men here, to attack other peacekeepers. The Zolarians may be our rivals, but the Council of Corvan will not be dictated to as to when or how that rivalry is dealt with.”

He turned his blank visage on the Eurasians, who were watching him sullenly. There was no sign of fear in most of their expressions, particularly the officer’s. Bannon didn’t care. He wasn’t there to intimidate them.

He addressed the locals once more. “These men used you to try to start a war. They failed. They will pay for it.” He stepped back and nodded.

The locals weren’t ready for what came next. There were gasps as Corvanite soldiers suddenly stepped up to each kneeling Eurasian—all except for the youngest, who had only a single pip on his collar—put their muzzles to the men’s skulls, pointed down into the dirt, and pulled the triggers.

The volley of gunfire somehow sounded louder than the omnibangers had. It echoed off the buildings as blood spattered explosively on the pavement beneath the kneeling men. Almost as one, they keeled over, falling face-first onto the ground, their ruined skulls bouncing slightly, illuminated by the crawler’s floods.

Bannon looked down at them impassively, though a part of him rebelled at what he had just ordered done. He was a soldier, not a butcher. Not an executioner. But the reality of this form of war had just forced him to become one.

It wasn’t the first time.

He looked around at the shocked villagers. “These men did not have your best interests at heart! They were interlopers, representatives of an Earth power that cared nothing for you for the three generations you have lived on this planet!” His amplified voice roared out over the village, even over the rumble of the crawler’s engine. “They sought to use you as a power play! Remember, this is Corvanite space. We are the ones who have genuinely done what we could to protect you against the otuchans.”

He turned back toward the crawler. Trent and the blocking fire team had returned from the back of the warehouse, and it was the big autogunner who grabbed the surviving young Eurasian soldier and propelled him toward the crawlers on the perimeter. “Let this be a lesson, and make sure that your fellow Zhogalganites hear about it! We are here to keep the peace, and we will do so, whatever that takes!”

Bannon turned on his heel and walked back toward his crawler, leaving the corpses lying in the square.

Just as he stepped up onto the ramp, he caught a faint blue flash on the horizon, just over the low hills to the north of the village. He paused, frowning. It had almost looked like lightning, but there were no clouds in the sky. The stars stood out stark and clear. Even so, the faint rumble of thunder reached his ears a moment later.

Bannon was not a superstitious man, but something about that flash and rumble, so soon after the executions he’d just ordered, sent a chill up his spine.

Shaking it off, he boarded his vehicle, grabbing the handhold on the overhead just behind the turret as his driver turned the crawler around toward where the drop shuttles were still smoking faintly under the starry sky.

CHAPTER 21

Captain Thill watched the vidrec with barely disguised shock. It had been splashed across every screen and holo tank all over the planet for the last couple of days, but Thill couldn’t seem to let it go.

“It’s barbaric.” He shook his head, his eyes still riveted on the holo tank. “How can humanity still stoop to this level?”

Draven didn’t respond, at least not at first. He found himself conflicted. The executions of the Concordium special operations team had been brutal, and the message sent had been no less savage. The Corvanites considered Zhogalgan to be in their territory, and they would brook no interference. Consistent with their philosophy and history, they had solved a problem with raw, naked force.

And it seemed to have worked. There had been no more reports of attacks on either Zolarian or Corvanite forces, at least not by Zhogalganites using Eurasian weapons. And Draven had to admit, especially after having personally cleaned up after one of those attacks, that he thought the Eurasians had had it coming. They’d killed his people, after all.

It was just hard to accept that it had been the Corvanites who had dispensed justice for that.

“Things have been quiet since it happened,” he said.

Thill turned and frowned at him. “You can’t possibly be condoning this, First Sergeant.” His expression got colder. “That’s hardly proper for a senior noncommissioned officer in the Grand Army of Zolah.”

The threat was implicit, and Draven picked up on it. He might be the professional backbone of the company, but the officers still had the ultimate say. And the officers had political concerns foremost in their minds.

“I can’t say I’m condoning it, sir.” Draven picked his words very carefully. “And I recognize that the threat was leveled against us just as much as it was against the Concordium. The Corvanites don’t want us here any more than they want the Eurasians here. That said, the fact of the matter is that it seems to have worked, at least for now. Things have been quiet for the last few days, and we can focus more on the mission, which is ending the war between the humans and the otuchans here on Zhogalgan.”

It was a politically neutral speech, which Draven had gotten better at over the years. Better than he’d ever wanted to. It was tiresome, just how much political jockeying had become a part of every single aspect of Army life, but there was no escaping it, at least not without a commanding officer who eschewed it for the sake of the mission.

And those men and women were unlikely to take the steps necessary to get elected to a commission in the first place.

Thill wasn’t really listening, though. He tended to have a rather selective sense of hearing, especially when he was already on a tear. “This is unconscionable. This is a war crime. And I can’t believe that my senior noncom thinks it’s actually a good thing!” He slapped the armrest of his chair.

“That’s not what I said, sir.” Draven took a deep breath, forcing his temper back down. One of these days he wasn’t going to be able to, but he had to, if only for the sake of the rest of the company. Maker knew the officers wouldn’t keep these men and women alive if the inevitable clash with the Corvanites happened. They weren’t the ones maintaining security, keeping the kids equipped, or making sure they practiced good tactics, making up for training that didn’t even begin to compare to what the Corvanites got from the age of fourteen. “I agree, it was a barbaric act of violence, and broadcasting it all over the system was intended to spread terror. However, we can’t change it, and we can take advantage of the situation that it’s created.”

He moved to the holo and switched off the recording. “We’ve been struggling to win hearts and minds ever since the Corvanites got here. Who’s taken the right course is neither here nor there, but the Corvanites made it clear to the locals that they are taking sides and protecting them against the alien otuchans.”

“Who were here first,” Thill pointed out, interrupting him.

“They also attacked first, sir.” Draven knew he was treading a thin line, but it had to be said. “The humans on this planet didn’t start the war, and they’re only here because their starship crashed.”

“That’s irrelevant. They were here first, so trying to conquer them is unethical.” The captain wasn’t going to back down. “The Corvanites aren’t working for peace, they’re trying to crush the otuchans just because they aren’t human.”

That was a stretch, even given Draven’s own feelings about the Corvanites and their hair-trigger interventions across the sector. He’d had a few run-ins with Corvanites out on the frontier—though nothing nearly like this—and he’d never gotten a human supremacist vibe from any of them. If they were anything, it was obsessively focused on being prepared for the next Newlander War. Everything else was just preparation for that.

“That’s beside my point, sir.” He picked his words even more carefully. “As I understand it from the briefing materials, we have two objectives here on Zhogalgan. The first, obviously, is to create peace. We’re trying to do that by keeping the humans and the otuchans apart, but it’s bred some resentment among the locals, since they see us as stopping them from defending themselves. That might not be what we’re doing, but it’s what they think we’re doing, and the Corvanites have capitalized on that.

“Well, the Corvanites just handed us a victory, sir. Maybe a minor one, but a victory nonetheless.” This was a stretch, too, and Draven knew it, but he also understood the dynamics in the background. Almost a hundred sixty thousand hours in the service had taught him many things, mainly through quiet observation. The change of command after General Pleimelding’s disgrace had put all the senior officers on the planet on the defensive, and the junior O’s—including Thill—would be maneuvering to take advantage. The conversation they were having might seem like it was pointless speculation, except that if Thill took the right lessons from it, and passed them along, then it could very well influence the way the entire campaign on Zhogalgan went forward. “We have a pause, now. The otuchans have been deprived of weapons, and the phratries that were on the front of the new offensive have been decimated. We have the breathing room now to fix General Pleimelding’s mistakes and integrate our people with the local Zhogalganites. Really work for peace, instead of just trying to keep a lid on the pressure vessel.” He lifted an eyebrow. “If we really are going to establish a permanent presence on Zhogalgan, then we’re going to have to work on that resentment, or we’ll be doomed to a century of this same sort of warfare.”

For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he’d gotten through. He wondered if he wasn’t wasting his breath, and whether it was stupid to even attempt to influence things this way. He wasn’t an officer. He had no future political career as one of the quiet “experts” who really ran the Grand Democracy. His stakes were with the men and women of the company.

But he recognized that it was that very set of stakes that meant he had to try. It was going to be those men and women who were going to bleed and die for nothing if this entire operation unraveled the way it was going.

Fortunately, though, instead of biting his head off, Captain Thill nodded thoughtfully. It was a very practiced sort of expression, borderline fake, but Draven had come to expect that from the captain. Thill was a politician, first and foremost.

“You may have a point, First Sergeant.” Thill rubbed his chin. “I admit that I was a little caught up in the outrage of the thing, but that’s an interesting perspective.”

You were caught up in the outrage you could leverage into position. Draven didn’t say it. He didn’t even think it all that loudly. He was finding that his cynicism was becoming a constant background hum these days.

Thill nodded, turning away from the holo tank and standing up. His office was far larger than Draven would have expected in a war zone, taken over from one of the better-off industrialists in the western settlement of Akthrister. One of the biggest windows Draven had seen on the entire planet looked out on the green zone, the fields of Earth plants strikingly green against the gray of the local soil and plant life. He still didn’t know why the place had been named “White Fields,” but that was neither here nor there.

“Yes, you’ve given me something to think about, First Sergeant.” Thill stared out at the view. The sky was getting darker as evening came on. “Thank you. I’ll take it under advisement when we have our next planning meeting.” He frowned, his voice dropping as he mused. “Maybe that’s why that operation got canceled.”

“What operation, sir?” Draven hadn’t heard about any operation, or anything getting canceled. It must have been at a pretty high level.

Thill glanced at him appraisingly, then shrugged. “Well, it’s over now, so I suppose there’s no harm. It’s not like you’re going to go tell the Corvanites. There was a show of force being prepared on the border of the Zolarian and Corvanite areas of responsibility. The new command wanted to make it clear to the Corvanites that they can’t just run roughshod over everyone else, that we’d defend our interests.” He rubbed his chin, turning his attention back to the window. “I suspect that General Greaney decided that the massacre in the north made it an unacceptable escalation at this point in time.”

He nodded vaguely in Draven’s direction. “Dismissed. For now.”

Of course he didn’t bother to ask anything about the state of the company, Draven thought. Readiness, morale, anything like that. How this operational tempo as we spread out across a new sector is affecting the area as well as the soldiers. No, those are my concerns.

He turned on his heel and marched out of the office, leaving Thill to dream about his upcoming career as a demagogue.

He’d barely gotten through the door when his comm chimed. He frowned. None of the platoons were due for check-in yet, and even then they should have contacted the Operations Center first, since they were on base, and back with the battalion—rare as that was, given the sheer amount of territory the peacekeeping forces had to cover.

“First Sergeant Draven.” He hadn’t even checked to see who was calling. Something felt strange.

“First Sergeant! It’s Sergeant Yusuko! We’re under attack and need—”

The transmission cut off with a boom and a squeal of static.

Draven was already heading for the ready room at a run.

CHAPTER 22

Reconnaissance was a vital mission set, and Captain Haarot had displayed considerable confidence in Bannon and his phalanx by assigning them to reconnaissance and special operations.

It just didn’t always feel that rewarding.

As Bannon stared out at the empty plain in front of him, surmounted by what remained of the wreckage of the Kotszebue, he stifled a sigh. Nothing had changed in the twenty hours that the phalanx had been watching the wreck.

The Concordium exploration ship was surprisingly intact, given its abrupt atmospheric entry and crash most of a century ago. Much of the hull had been burned away on the way down from orbit, but the entry angle had been shallow enough that it had still held its spine together when it hit. A lot of the rest of the structure had crumpled and been smashed to small pieces, but the reactor hadn’t been breached, so the wreck was still there, in the middle of a considerable crater.

The quiet after the executions of the Eurasian special operations team had presented something of an opportunity, and Haarot had been quick to take advantage of it. There was a lot of territory out there, particularly around the Dauyl Tenizi, the long, narrow sea that nearly split the hemisphere and disappeared under the southern polar ice cap, that they had no ground-level eyes on, and there were rumors—backed up, in some cases, by imagery from the starships in orbit—of more otuchan phratries moving into some of that territory, particularly along the stark, rocky shores of that sea. Haarot wanted Bannon’s assessment on the ground.

So far, after six days of hopping from observation point to observation point via VTOL and crawler, they’d seen nothing.

Nothing, except for several more of those occasional blue flares, never directly observed. Bannon was starting to wonder if he was really seeing them, or if they were anything but lightning. This close to the Dauyl Tenizi, it was entirely possible that they were just lightning. The weather that close to the cold sea would be unpredictable at best.

They were currently well north of the Corvanite areas of responsibility. That could get risky if the Zolarians were watching them, but the Zolarians didn’t belong here, and if they decided to move on the Corvanites after the killings in that village, then there was no doubt where this was going. Then again, there had never been much doubt, not after they’d moved into a system this close to the Corvan system.

“I’d thought the wreck would be more central to the human areas.” Killian crouched down next to where Bannon was lying just at the crest of the ridgeline, scanning the landscape with his magnifiers. The big squad sergeant was careful to stay below the crest. While they hadn’t seen any movement, or anything living at all apart from the low ground cover that waved in the wind coming off the sea, good tactical habits meant that he wasn’t going to expose himself any more than necessary. “You know, ancestry and all that.”

“They were already half a year into building the colony by the time the ship deorbited.” Bannon didn’t take his eyes away from the objective as he spoke. “Even if they didn’t have radiation to worry about, they weren’t going to uproot their settlements to move hundreds of miles away to gather around a wreck.” He turned his magnifiers briefly on the crumpled, decaying metal cylinder. “Though it is kind of impressive.”

Killian twisted his neck to look toward the top of the ridge, but he was still too low to see the wreck, so he just shrugged. “It’s a wrecked starship. A starship where it’s not supposed to be. The uniqueness alone is going to make it impressive. That’s why I thought it might make an interesting central monument for the colony.”

Bannon didn’t comment, pivoting slightly toward the base of the ship and increasing the magnifiers’ power. There was nothing there but the softly undulating ground cover and the twisted, scorched, shattered remains of hull plating. Yet he had seen something move.

He kept watching the area, but nothing showed itself. The scene below stayed quiet, the wind whispering and moaning through the destroyed superstructure. He carefully scanned every inch of the wreck and the crater that he could see. He was starting to feel like they were being watched, despite the fact that they’d done everything possible to conceal their presence. The crawlers were under their camouflage shrouds, as were most of the dismounts. They hadn’t exposed themselves to the wreck at all, except just as much as they needed to get eyes on it.

So what was bothering him?

“Sir?” Killian had moved up next to him and had his own magnifiers in his hands. “Do you see something down there?”

Bannon glanced over at his senior squad sergeant. “No movement, nothing.” He wondered what had brought this on. Was he not alone in feeling that something was off?

“Huh.” Killian was watching the wreck anyway. His visor hid his eyes, but he appeared to be scanning intently. After a moment, he lowered his magnifiers. He was still watching the wreck. “Sir, I hate to be that guy, but something just feels off. Like something’s watching us. Or something’s going to happen.”

Bannon returned his attention to the ancient crater. “More than one ambush has been avoided over the years because somebody had a feeling. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I’ve seen it often enough not to question it.” He turned and slid partway down the hill. “Get the full phalanx on stand-to.”

As soon as he was below the crest, he was on his feet and heading for his crawler, where Sergeant Ollan was monitoring the comms and the sensor packages. Those had gotten beefed up for the reconnaissance mission, and if there was anything out there emitting any known patterns of radiation—at least, within line of sight—they should be able to pick it up.

Something made him pause, though. It was hard to be sure, since he’d been moving, the rocks and clods underfoot crunching under his boots and his own heartbeat in his ears, but he could have sworn he’d just heard thunder.

He looked up and around, but if there had been a strange blue flash, he’d missed it.

He’d just started back toward the crawler again when Killian’s voice came over the comm. The sergeant’s tone was even and calm, but there was a tautness there that demanded immediate attention. “Bogey incoming.”

Bannon stopped and turned, starting back up the hill. Even as he did so, the craft passed by overhead.

It didn’t look like any Corvanite, Zolarian, Eurasian, or any other craft he’d ever seen. It was dark, shaped like a nested pair of lozenges, one long and narrow, if blunt-nosed, with the aft section flattened and broader. The hull was strangely textured—it was flying low enough that he could see that—and there were no visible windows or ports.

It passed quickly overhead in complete silence and continued toward the southeast.

The shock of the obviously alien ship, belonging to no race or faction Bannon knew of anywhere in the Zhogalganite system, stopped him for a moment. It didn’t take long for him to realize that it was heading for somewhere near the Zolarian-Corvanite DMZ.

He had nothing to go on but a hunch, but something was afoot, and they needed to move fast.

He keyed his comm. “Phalanx, mount up. Ollan, get comms with Company and send Captain Haarot a full report on that ship—size, heading, everything. Then contact the VTOLs and call for extract.” He wasn’t running, but he wasn’t moving slowly, either. “We need to follow that thing.”

CHAPTER 23

The blower engines howled, almost drowning Draven out as he repeated his call over the comm. “Sergeant Yusuko, this is First Sergeant Draven. Status report.” He was fighting to keep his voice calm and steady. Yusuko might have been a pain in his ass, and his least effective platoon sergeant, but she was still one of his. That distress call had been bad, but the silence afterward had been worse.

Fortunately, he was alone in the command blower. He didn’t even have a full two platoons with him. He’d been half into his hardsuit by the time he’d reached the motor pool, and he’d waited almost a whole five minutes before he’d threatened the base security coordinator’s life to get the men he’d gathered and their vehicles out of the wire and headed for Yusuko’s patrol area. She hadn’t given him a location, but coordination with the Excelsior in orbit had gotten him at least the right village.

As for Captain Thill, he hadn’t even contacted Draven over the comms. As near as Draven could tell, the captain was focused on rewriting the entire Zolarian strategy on Zhogalgan and hadn’t noticed that one of his platoons was under attack and out of contact.

They were following the Tarsu River—not much more than a stream, really—toward the small settlement of Aibektinui. Some of the stranger “trees” he’d seen on Zhogalgan grew here, sheltered from the more violent weather by the deep gorge cut by the Tarsu, forming weird, twisted fans that looked even more alien than the lower, spatulate growths. The blowers were on the higher ground above the gorge, and Draven was acutely aware of just how close to the Corvanite AOR they were—and how belligerent Yusuko had generally been toward their Corvanite counterparts. Every possible nightmare scenario about her inadvertently starting an interstellar war was dancing through his head as he held on and stared at the holo map, the blower rocking and occasionally shuddering with a bang as the skirts hit a rock or some bit of microterrain in their way.

Sometimes he thought that the Corvanites were smart to deploy only wheeled and tracked crawlers on planetary surfaces.

“Sergeant Yusuko, this is First Sergeant Draven. Respond.”

Silence.

“Five minutes out, First Sergeant.” Sergeant Third Class Edmons was driving, and while Thill had generally treated the junior noncom as a glorified servant, Draven had realized early on that the younger man had a good head for tactics and a lot of common sense. He wasn’t a native Zolarian but came from Aeretel, one of the first worlds colonized by the Grand Democracy. While the official line was that such distinctions didn’t matter, the truth was that non-native Zolarians needed to work harder to prove themselves as soldiers. Edmons had done an admirable job of it. Enough so that Draven had given him as complete a brief as he could and continued to give him every update as he got it from the Excelsior, until the starship was over the horizon and out of contact.

Draven reached down and pulled his MA-57 rifle out of its rack, the contacts in the grip linking with those in his gauntlet, bringing the targeting reticle swimming up into his HUD. It had been quite some time since he’d had to be on the ground with a rifle in his hands, but he was going to go in and get his people out.

“Good copy, Edmons. Launch the blower’s drone.”

“Way ahead of you, First Sergeant.” Ordinarily Edmons would have a bit of a laugh at that, but not this time. “It went up thirty seconds ago.”

Draven just nodded, though Edmons couldn’t see it, and keyed the holo tank to display the drone’s feed. It flickered, then solidified.

He leaned forward, unconsciously making up for another lurch as the blower hit a depression in the ground and dipped. Something was very wrong.

There wasn’t much smoke. The low, thick-walled brick buildings all seemed to be intact except for two near the center of the village, which was laid out in a rough circle around a domed two-story town hall. Those two destroyed buildings had been flattened as if by artillery, and faint trails of smoke rose from the rubble and trailed away quickly in the wind coming out of the south.

The platoon’s blowers were set in a very rough perimeter around the village, as if Yusuko had been setting up for a sweep. The placement was sloppy, as Draven had come to expect from Second Platoon, but that wasn’t what attracted his attention.

It was the fact that there was no movement anywhere in the village. Not even a dog.

The drone’s resolution from this distance couldn’t make out whether or not there were bodies on the ground, but it picked up dark spots that might be.

“All vehicles, this is Draven. Form a line and advance at half speed. I want turrets ready and scanning. We’ll halt half a kilometer outside the village, dismount, and conduct a sweep across. We have no comms with Second Platoon. Be ready for anything.”

“Copy, First Sergeant.” Sergeant First Class Ferrier was the only platoon sergeant with the reaction force, and he was the kind who would be bound and determined not to let his superior noncom upstage him. As far as Ferrier was concerned, platoon leadership was his job. He’d take orders, but then he expected Draven to get out of the way and let him do what needed to be done.

Draven would ordinarily applaud such an attitude, but with the limited numbers they had, against what was probably an overwhelming force, whether Corvanite or otuchan, he wasn’t going to stay back in the vehicle and play coordinator.

Edmons didn’t slow smoothly but brought the blower to a fairly abrupt halt. If they’d had manned turrets, and Draven had been in theirs, he probably would have cussed his driver clear back to Zolah. As it was, he caught himself before the lurch slammed him into the holo display.

“Sorry, First Sergeant.”

“Never mind, Edmons. Just drop the ramp.”

The ramp came down and Draven pounded down it, joining the rest of the scattershot platoon as they spread out from the ragged line of grounded blowers. The turrets pivoted left and right, searching for threats, but the area around the small settlement was quiet and eerily still.

There was a strange feeling in the air. Since he was sealed up in his hardsuit, Draven had to assume that it was something about the disturbing quiet that was getting under his skin.

“Combat dispersion, skirmish line. Bound by twos. Do not fire unless fired upon.” That last bit was a necessity under the circumstances. It was SOP for the peacekeeping force as it was, but faced with an unknown enemy that had presumably wiped out or incapacitated the entirety of Second Platoon, it needed some reinforcement. Just by observing body language, he could tell that some of his soldiers were just as rattled as he felt. “Blowers, follow behind the skirmish line. Same instructions.”

He moved quickly up to a small dip in the ground between low, covered fields. The locals had found a way to grow Earth-compatible crops here without building full-sized greenhouses; the fields were covered in low transparent boxes that could be opened and accessed for tending and harvesting. They wouldn’t provide cover, and they canalized the infantry to a degree that Draven didn’t like at all, but they would have canalized Yusuko’s blowers even more. They couldn’t get over those boxes and had had to spread out between the fields.

Only half a kilometer wasn’t a lot of distance to cover. He’d picked that because it was still a tricky shot for most people, human or alien, even with modern optics and targeting systems. Soon, after a handful of bounds, the platoon was at the first pair of Second Platoon’s blowers. They were quiescent, their power plants still running but their fans not even turning. Their turrets were trained toward the village, but they hadn’t moved since the reinforcements had first gotten eyes on them.

Draven approached the nearest blower, with Ferrier and two of his soldiers backing him up. As he carefully moved around the front of the blower, he saw just why nothing was moving.

A ragged, scorched hole had been blasted right through the central vision block. From the looks of it, and the faint waver of heat that still came off the metal and synthetic, it had obliterated the driver. Two more holes had punched through the armor higher up, shrugging off the angle as well as the thickness of the plating as if it hadn’t mattered at all.

The crew of that blower was dead. There was no doubt in Draven’s mind.

He still needed to be sure. With the power plant still running, it took only seconds to get the ramp open using the infantry override outside.

When it came down, he wished that he’d left it shut. The hardsuit helmet kept him from having to smell the abattoir that was the inside of the blower, but the sight alone was enough to make a hardened veteran queasy.

Draven realized that he didn’t consider himself such a hardened veteran, and turned away. Whatever had hit the blower hadn’t left much more than chunks of the crew, spattering the inside of the vehicle with a fine slurry of meat and blood, studded with blood-coated chunks of hardsuit.

“Keep moving. On-line, sweep the settlement.” He gulped back his gorge as he lowered his weapon and tried to lead by example. Throwing up in your helmet would not only be terrible, but it would also set a pretty bad example.

He knew that he should check the next blower, but he could already see the impact holes from where he was, and he knew what they’d find.

They started to move through the cluster of buildings. Up close, he could see that there was more damage than had appeared on the drone feed. More holes were punched clear through bricks, most of them almost thirty centimeters thick. Whatever had done this, it was a hell of a weapon.

The otuchans had some powerful rifles and rockets, but nothing that could do this. Had the Corvanites fielded something new? They were the only other suspect on the planet that Draven knew of. And yet, that didn’t make sense. It was a Corvanite platoon—“phalanx,” they called it—that had killed those Concordium soldiers for supplying the local militia with arms to kill Zolarians. Why would they turn around and launch an attack like this only days later?

Unless the real message of those executions had been, “Nobody kills the Zolarians but us.”

There were bodies on the ground as they got closer to the town hall. Some had been hit with the same weapon that had cored out the blowers; these were now little more than splashes of blood and offal on the ground. Others had been struck by something smaller but no less powerful. Holes had been punched through torsos, limbs had been blown off, and at least one corpse was missing its head.

After a moment’s morbid examination, Draven realized that the headless one was Yusuko. He knew only by the Sergeant First Class stripes on her pauldron.

“What happened here?” Ferrier was more hardened than Draven, but even he sounded like he was in shock.

They’d seen some ugly stuff on Zhogalgan. Despite the official narrative that the otuchans were the first colonists, and therefore the oppressed minority who needed to be dealt with reasonably, they’d wreaked some horrible destruction on the border settlements before the Zolarian forces had arrived to put a stop to the killing. Even after the peacekeepers had gotten established on the planet’s surface, the otuchan raids had continued, and Draven and the rest of the company had seen the aftermath of a few. This was different. This was far worse.

There wasn’t even any indication that the Zolarians had managed to put up much of a fight.

Draven bent down and picked up Yusuko’s rifle. It was still on safe. Several of the others had apparently been fired, but there were no enemy bodies to show for it.

That made him even more suspicious. The easy answer to this riddle remained Corvanites, but however petulant and incompetent Yusuko might have been, Draven had enough faith in her and his people to be sure that they would have taken at least a few with them. But there was no sign that anyone other than Zolarians and local settlers had died here. No bloodstains, no drag marks.

“Spread out, clear each building.” He looked up at the sky. The wan sunlight wasn’t bright enough to drown out the reflections of ships in orbit, and he could see the faint gleam of one of them, though he couldn’t tell whether it was Zolarian, Corvanite, Eurasian, or even one of the other observers.

Something told him that it was probably Corvanite, looking down at the devastation.

“Sergeant Ferrier.” The platoon sergeant paused, then finished tasking out his clearing teams before trotting over to join Draven, his hardsuit boots kicking up little puffs of dust.

“Yes, First Sergeant?” There was an unfamiliar brittleness in Ferrier’s tone and body language. He was shaken, and it took a lot to shake Ferrier up.

“Take a couple of yours and do a perimeter sweep. Step carefully and record every sign you can pick up on the ground. Bloodstains, vehicle tracks, anything.” He looked around at the carnage. “If there are crawler tracks, I want to know, and I want them recorded, before weather or other vehicles wipe them out.”

Ferrier didn’t ask questions. He just nodded, turned on his heel, and barked for Donnewitz and Mitchell as he headed for the edge of the village and the motionless heavy metal tombs that had been infantry blowers until very recently.

Draven stayed where he was, his eyes roving over the eerily quiet devastation, waiting for the next blow to fall.

CHAPTER 24

The VTOLs weren’t big enough to carry the crawlers internally, but they could sling them underneath. It was a surprisingly simple procedure, one which the Corvanite warriors had drilled along with everything else until they could do it while half asleep. They had a limited ceiling with the crawlers beneath their hulls, but that was a positive in Bannon’s mind. As an infantryman, he would much rather be closer to the ground and less exposed to enemy fire, and he’d never been entirely comfortable with the VTOLs in the first place.

“There’s a settlement up ahead, sir!” The pilot had to shout to be heard over the roar of the VTOL’s engines, even over the comms. “Right on the azimuth you gave us! You want to set down and check it out?”

Bannon considered ordering it just to get out of the air for a little bit, and when he checked his map, he knew that he had to anyway. This was the last settlement before the DMZ. He had a nasty hunch forming about that alien ship, and if he was right, this was the right spot.

“Set us down! Not right on the ville, though! Give us a couple miles’ offset!”

“I was already going to do that, Lieutenant! There are Zolarian hovercraft around the ville. Didn’t feel like touching down in the middle of that!”

Even as the pilot spoke, the VTOL banked, and Bannon gritted his teeth. Orbital drops and suborbital hops aren’t this bad.

The VTOLs couldn’t land with the crawlers slung underneath them, so instead the pilot flared, making it feel for a moment like they were going to go over backward, then dropped the aircraft into a hover, the engines’ rumble vibrating through the crawler—and every bone in Bannon’s body. “Stand by!”

A really good VTOL pilot would actually soft-touch the crawler onto the ground, release, and pull up. Either this pilot wasn’t that good, or he was really concerned about the lasers mounted on the Zolarian vehicle turrets. He released the crawler, and Bannon felt a moment’s freefall before the vehicle slammed onto the ground with a tooth-rattling impact.

“All squads, check in.” That had been a hell of a dismount, and the crackling growl of the VTOL’s engines was still reverberating through the crawler as the aircraft pivoted and raced away at low level, just to be on the safe side. They’d already circled around to the west, just to make sure that they approached from the Corvanite side of the DMZ, so the VTOLs were now heading back into the Corvanite zone. The reaction to the phalanx’s extract from deep within the Zolarian zone had made both Bannon and the flight leader agree that playing it safe was probably a better bet.

Of course, “safe” was dependent on what they found in this settlement.

“Third Squad, up and moving.” Hern would be the first one to check in. He was a hard-charger, and always had been, even back when he’d been Corporal Hern.

“Keep on-line with the rest of the phalanx, Hern.” Sometimes his former assistant squad leader needed to be reined in a little, and with a Zolarian force on the ground—almost three platoons, to use the Zolarians’ turn of phrase—they needed to approach this cautiously. Following the alien ship had been a hunch, but if his hunch was right, things were not well in this place, and the size of the Zolarian element tended to back that up.

“Second Squad, up.” Killian sounded as blasé as ever, as if he followed strange alien ships that didn’t belong in the system every day.

“First Squad, up.” Summ sounded nervous. He needed to get over that; he’d pinned on sergeant just before they’d departed on this mission, and he’d been First Squad’s squad sergeant for some time now. But that was an issue for another time.

“We’ll halt five hundred yards from the edge of the Zolarian perimeter.” Bannon needed to emphasize that they weren’t here to get in a fight, not yet. This was reconnaissance, even if it was a different sort than the long-range observation they’d been doing recently.

Something had happened here, and the alien ship they’d seen out in the wilderness had probably had something to do with it.

As the crawler creaked to a stop and the ramp lowered, he continued his cautions over the comm. “Keep muzzles up until we have hostile act or hostile intent. That goes for the turrets, too. We’re hunting that alien craft, not trouble with the Zolarians.” That was a strange thing to say, given the entire mission on Zhogalgan so far.

Stepping off the ramp and coming around toward the front of the crawler, he could see that something was very, very wrong. There were close to a dozen of the Zolarian infantry fighting vehicles gathered around the outside of the settlement, and Zolarians in hardsuits were moving around the place, but more than a third of the vehicles were grounded and smoking faintly, and there were a lot of bodies on the ground.

Several of the Zolarian soldiers had converged on the closest hovercraft, weapons in hand, their body language hard to read through the hardsuits and the blank, faceless visors. The rifles held at the ready, positioned to quickly be aimed at the Corvanites, said all that needed to be said.

Bannon kept his own weapon pointed at the dirt and stopped only about two steps past the front of his crawler.

“You are out of your zone, Corvanite.” The man who stepped forward had six stripes on his pauldrons. A first sergeant, if Bannon was remembering Zolarian ranks right. A senior NCO, in a military where the NCOs were the only real professional backbone. The Zolarians didn’t have the same service requirements for officers that the Corvanites did.

There was something vaguely familiar about this first sergeant, too. And as he came closer, Bannon saw that the nameplate on the man’s chest plate read “Draven.” It was the same man he’d confronted outside of Az Ku.

“We have good reason,” Bannon said, momentarily ignoring the fact that he’d met this man before, “and it has nothing to do with your people.” He scanned his surroundings carefully. It definitely looked like nearly half the Zolarian vehicles had been destroyed, though he couldn’t see enough to tell by what. Something precise enough not to reduce them to smoldering wrecks.

“There are those who would dispute that.” Draven hadn’t moved, though several of the lower-ranked soldiers near him had stirred angrily, a couple of muzzles rising an inch or so. “Considering the nearness of your zone, the list of suspects potentially responsible for this massacre gets pretty short. Especially after your people were already spotted deep within our zone.”

That he didn’t mention the executions of the Eurasian special operations team was interesting. What he said next, before Bannon could respond, was even more so.

“I don’t think that you were behind this, but that isn’t going to save you when our reinforcements show up. So I suggest you get back on your VTOLs and return to your own zone.” The first sergeant moved for the first time, putting a hand out to signal his men to lower their weapons again.

Bannon hadn’t come all this way just to give up and leave things to the Zolarians. As much as it chafed him to confide in a Zolarian, the mission was intelligence gathering, and if there was yet another actor on Zhogalgan, then Commander Fox needed to know. “I haven’t even said that we didn’t do it,” he said, “though we didn’t. So what convinced you?”

For a moment, it looked like the Zolarian NCO wasn’t going to bother answering. He surprised Bannon, though. “There are no crawler or boot tracks leading back to your zone, and the weapon effects here are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s possible that your people are testing something new, but something tells me it wasn’t your style. Despite certain past history.”

Bannon suspected that he was referring to the executions in the north, though he’d seen enough since this deployment had started to expect that there were all sorts of grisly stories about Corvanite interventions being spread around by Zolarian propaganda outlets.

“There are also dead Zhogalganites on the ground here,” the first sergeant continued, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “We may be rivals, Corvanite, but I can accept that people who have gone out of their way to defend the locals probably wouldn’t massacre a whole settlement of them. Especially not after the last time you and I met.”

So, Draven recognized him, too. Interesting. Especially considering Corvanites didn’t use nametags on their uniforms.

“But again,” the Zolarian cautioned, “I would advise you not to expect my superiors to accept that logic.” He tilted his helmeted head slightly to one side. “Why are you here?”

There it was. Bannon had to decide whether to talk to this Zolarian before he consulted with Captain Haarot or Commander Fox, or simply get on the move again.

If the Zolarians know something …

“We followed an alien ship here.” The die was cast, and now Bannon had to play the thing out. “It passed over us without making a sound and came this way.” He briefly considered mentioning the blue flash and the thunder, but that could end up revealing too much to their enemies.

The first sergeant glanced over his shoulder, back toward the wrecks and the bodies in the settlement. “That would explain some things.” He turned back to study Bannon. After a moment, his pauldrons rose and fell, as if he’d sighed. “If I show you what we’re dealing with here, will you tell me everything you saw? Do you have a record of it?”

That was asking a lot. Especially since comms hadn’t worked when the ship had gone over, and they hadn’t even managed to dump the recordings to Captain Haarot yet.

“There’s only so much that I can promise.”

Once again, Draven studied him carefully. Bannon kept his expression neutral, giving nothing away. Finally, the Zolarian shrugged. “We are rivals, if not enemies, Corvanite. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let someone kill my people and use their bodies to drive us into a war. If we fight you, it’s going to be on our terms.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Zolarian.”

With what might have been another sigh, the first sergeant waved off his bodyguard and beckoned. “I’ll show you what we found, Lieutenant.”

Bannon turned to Hern. “Give me three.” He might be reaching out—and straining the leeway he had as a special operations/reconnaissance leader—but there was only so far he was going to trust a Zolarian. These were the people who’d been running guns to genocidal otuchans, after all.

“Lewiski, Baddlet, Alexius.” It wasn’t lost on Bannon that Hern had picked the three senior men in the squad, men who’d been a part of the unit while Bannon had still been squad sergeant. The three men stepped forward, their rifles pointed at the dirt, but with a coiled-spring alertness to all of them.

Flanked by his fireteam, Bannon followed the first sergeant into the graveyard of the Zhogalganite settlement.

CHAPTER 25

The first sergeant led him to one of the Zolarian hovercraft first. The ramp was down, giving him a clear view of the carnage inside, light coming in through the neat holes punched in the front glacis. Each one was about the size of a fist, and judging by the devastation inside, whatever had made them had been moving fast. It hadn’t gone all the way through, though, so it had dumped all its energy into the occupants of the armored air-cushion vehicle.

Bannon could feel the Zolarian’s eyes on him. The first sergeant was looking for intel just as much as he was, and from what he’d said, these were his vehicles, so the dead men and women were his as well. It stood to reason that he would watch Bannon’s reaction, looking for any sign that he was lying and that the Corvanites had indeed conducted a weapons test of some sort here.

Bannon merely took in what he saw. He’d witnessed far too much bloodshed since he’d stepped off the agoge field and onto his first interstellar deployment to be too bothered by blood and gore, no matter how extreme it might be.

It was disturbing, however. He knew of no weapons in the Corvanite arsenal that would do this. Not without completely destroying the vehicle. This reflected an eerie combination of precision and firepower. There had been attempts to develop such weapons ever since the World Wars back on Earth. The laws of thermodynamics, along with the simple practicalities of combat weaponry, had precluded it for centuries.

Someone appeared to have found a way.

He thought of that dark, silent craft gliding past overhead. He could believe that anyone who could field a ship like that could probably do this.

“When did this happen?”

The first sergeant didn’t move to check a chrono, but he probably had a display inside that helmet visor. “I received the distress call about forty minutes ago.”

Bannon nodded. That tracked, based on the projected flight path of that strange craft.

“This ship.” The first sergeant was still watching him, though his eyes were hidden behind his visor. “What did it look like?”

“Dark. Strange texture on the hull. A narrower front section, rounded, and a wider, flatter drive section. Not much in the way of wings, but it seemed to have plenty of lift.” That had been the other strange part, in addition to its total silence, and the correlating phenomenon of the blue flash and the thunder that he’d noticed in the north. Humans and aliens had been trying to achieve antigravity for centuries, with no one getting any closer.

“Really.”

Something about the way the Zolarian said the word drew Bannon’s attention. “You’ve seen something like it?”

“I haven’t, but I’ve heard some old spacer tales about something like it.” The other man sounded pensive, despite the faint distortion of his helmet. “Interesting.” His head tilted slightly, as if he was listening. “This has all been fascinating, Lieutenant, but our reinforcements are getting close, and you’ll have a much harder time convincing them that your people weren’t behind this.” From the angle of his visor, he was staring at Bannon intently. “Don’t make me regret this, Lieutenant.”

“No promises.” Bannon could appreciate the first sergeant’s attitude, refusing to jump to the easy conclusion, but there was no way in hell he was going to bend over backward to make things easy for the Zolarians, who were doing their damnedest to force their way into Corvanite space. “Like you said, we’re rivals at best. I’ll do my duty. I have no doubt that you’ll do the same.”

There was a faint shake of the other man’s head, almost in disgust. “I should have expected nothing less.”

Knowing just how outnumbered he was, though the crawlers still had line of sight, Bannon didn’t want to turn his back on the Zolarians. Especially not if many or most of them blamed the Corvanites for their compatriots who had been turned into pink mist. And as he stepped back from the ruined hovercraft, he could see more than a few visors turned toward him, weapons not far behind.

The Zolarian first sergeant didn’t want a fight—the man had to know that he’d take even more losses, even if he managed to overwhelm the Corvanite phalanx eventually—but that might not matter. All it would take would be one stray shot, and all hell would break loose. And Bannon didn’t have a high opinion of Zolarian discipline.

An engine rumbled as one of the crawlers suddenly moved closer. Lewiski stepped up next to Bannon. “Tell your boys to cool off, First Sergeant.” He had his rifle partially raised, though it was still pointed at the ground at the nearest Zolarian’s feet, rather than at the hardsuited soldier.

Those hardsuits could take a lot of punishment. They wouldn’t necessarily stop bullets outright, but they’d buy the Zolarians time. The Corvanites weren’t wearing armor, dirtside SOP being in favor of mobility rather than protection.

“Sir,” Ollan’s voice came over the comm, “we have VTOLs and air-cushion vehicles inbound, coming on fast. We need to go now.” Ollan wasn’t thinking of the overall strategic situation and what it might mean if Corvanites backed down from Zolarians, even in the Zolarians’ own zone. He was thinking about not getting overwhelmed and killed.

Which, Bannon briefly reflected, was strategically viable, especially if it meant getting the intel back to Captain Haarot. There was something happening on Zhogalgan that went beyond the Corvanite-Zolarian rivalry, and that information had to get passed up.

Bannon took a step back, watching the Zolarian first sergeant.

The senior NCO didn’t make any hostile move. “I warned you, Lieutenant. I’ll try to explain to the captain what happened here, but if you don’t want to be detained or fired upon, I suggest you get back to your own zone as quickly as possible.” He turned his head as if turning toward the rest of his men, and Bannon’s helmet picked up the faint sound of his call over the comms. “Stand down, dammit!”

“Alexius, Baddlet, get back to the crawler.” Bannon held his ground. He’d be the last one to step off this ground, just as he’d been the first one on. The Zolarians were watching him, even as his supporting shooters turned and jogged back to the vehicle, where the turret was currently turned toward the enemy, the twin heavy lasers only slightly elevated. They could drop and turn a lot of Zolarians into pink mist, hardsuits or no, in seconds.

“Turn and go, sir.” Ollan’s voice echoed in his ears. “Everyone else is mounted up.”

Bannon could already hear the snarl of the Zolarian VTOLs as he turned away from the Zolarian first sergeant with a nod. He walked deliberately back to the vehicle, which was now flanked by two more of the Chariot 72s, just as two of the sleek, bulbous-nosed aircraft howled by overhead, circling the settlement.

The moment he’d boarded the crawler, he hit the override to raise the ramp. “Get us out of here, Ollan.” He keyed his comm and grabbed a handhold rather than wait to sit down as Ollan backed the crawler away from the Zolarian vehicles. “All vehicles, maintain defensive formation. Turrets out. Be prepared to engage, but do not fire unless fired upon.” It was an unwelcome instruction for Corvanites, especially when facing interlopers like the Zolarians, all the more reason to make it a necessary order under the circumstances.

He wasn’t authorized to start a war with the Zolarians. As much as aggression and an eagerness to fight had been inculcated in every one of them on the agoge field, the chain of command was even stronger. The mission had been to gather information. He’d done that, and now he had to get it back to their commanders. Then, at Commander Fox’s discretion, they could take action to put the Zolarians in their place.

The crawler bounced and rocked as it pulled away, the turret above rotating to cover the Zolarians while they turned away. Bannon held on with one hand, watching the tactical display as the VTOLs circled overhead and the Zolarians’ reinforcements descended on the stricken village in clouds of gray dust.

***

Captain Thill practically launched himself out of the command blower and stalked across the corpse-strewn square to confront Draven. It was the most intensity Draven had ever seen in the captain.

“First Sergeant Draven! Why are there Corvanite forces being allowed to withdraw from this, this… massacre untouched?” Thill stabbed a gauntleted finger to the south, where the Corvanite crawlers’ tires were still raising a substantial dust cloud. “They came and killed our people, as well as the locals who dared to oppose them, and you’re just letting them go?”

“Sir, there is no indication that the Corvanites had anything to do with this—” Draven barely got halfway through what he had to say before Thill cut him off.

“I’ll deal with you later.” He keyed the all-call comms. “Preybird Seven, fire warning shots to halt those Corvanite crawlers. If you take fire, or if they refuse to stop, then you are free to engage.” He looked around at the bodies still on the ground. “First and Fourth Platoons, move up on the flanks and cut those bastards off. They’ll pay for this.”

Acknowledgments came over the comms, though Draven thought he heard a bit of trepidation in Akiwe’s voice. The younger man hadn’t had to face Corvanites in combat yet, and it seemed that the stories about their attacks on the otuchans, not to mention the penetration raid that had seen the executions of the Eurasians, had had an effect. The Corvanites trained all their lives for war. They were not an opponent to be taken lightly.

Even when overwhelmed, they’d surely take more than a few Zolarians with them.

Draven stepped closer to Captain Thill, feeling the heat rising in his chest. He was still angry about the Corvanite lieutenant’s implicit threats, but he was infuriated at the thought of losing more of his kids to Corvanite fire when there was no need for it. “Sir, this is stupid.” He kept his voice low and off the comms. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t the Corvanites who did this. The weapon strikes are wrong, and there are no tracks or any other sign that the attack came from their side of the DMZ. All this is going to do is start a war with the Corvanites and get a bunch of our people killed.”

Thill wasn’t listening. Not really. “There’s no one else on this planet who could do it, First Sergeant. I don’t know why you’re suddenly losing your nerve, but I’ve had enough of Corvanite aggression here, and the high command is with me. Those bastards have entered our zone and killed our people for the last time. We’re going to end this. They want to fight instead of keep the peace? We’ll show them what that really means.”

Draven gritted his teeth. He knew then that he had no choice in the matter. Either he did his job as first sergeant and coordinated his platoons so that the least number of the young men and women he was responsible for got killed… or Thill would make sure he spent the rest of his life in the asteroids around Zolah Prime, breaking rocks for becoming a “traitor to the people.”

“I’ll get it done, sir.”

Sorry, Lieutenant, but as you said, I’ll do my duty.

CHAPTER 26

The VTOLs continued to circle overhead as the phalanx moved toward their own landing zone. Things were already looking like they were about to go sideways.

“Keep an eye on those aircraft,” Bannon said. “If they even start to level a cannon at one of us, I want them burned out of the sky.” He expected that they were heavily armored enough that such a feat would be more easily said than done, but no Corvanite would be expected to just meekly submit to death without a fight.

In the meantime, he needed to get some backup moving. “One Zero Two Six, this is One Zero Two Three.”

“This is Six.” Haarot’s voice gave nothing away.

Bannon had given a short report of their sighting out in no man’s land on the way, so Haarot already knew roughly where they were going. He’d also checked in just as they’d landed.

“Made contact with Zolarian forces at the targeted coordinates. The senior NCO on site was cooperative and allowed us to gather some more information. They’d taken losses to an unknown assailant, using weapons tech that we haven’t seen before. He warned me that his superiors were probably not going to be as cooperative. We are withdrawing, but it appears that the Zolarian reinforcements might turn hostile at any moment. They have air support and are approaching in near company strength.” A glance at the tactical view confirmed the last. “They are also coming out of the settlement and appear to be following us.”

“Solid copy on all, One Zero Two Three. We are already en route, and you should have air cover within the next few moments.” Haarot still sounded unconcerned. “Avoid engaging the enemy if possible, but you are cleared to defend yourselves.” His voice hardened. “If they want a war, they’ll get one.”

“Copy, sir.” Bannon watched the tactical display as he spoke. The VTOLs had gone some distance past the formation, and now they were coming around, dipping toward the terrain. It looked an awful lot like they were lining up for an attack run. “We will not be able to reach the landing zone. Forming a defensive perimeter approximately a mile outside the settlement.”

“Copy. Hold until relieved. Death comes, Lieutenant.”

“We will go and meet it, sir.”

Bannon switched back to the phalanx net even as the Zolarian VTOLs accelerated, obviously on an attack run. “All vehicles, make for the outcropping at two o’clock. Form a defensive perimeter.” He watched the projections of those two VTOLs. If the aircraft that had brought them in from no man’s land had been gunships, he would have called for them immediately, but they were slicks, better kept out of harm’s way.

Hern’s vehicle was already pushing for the high ground as the VTOLs swooped on the formation. Turrets were already pivoting toward the aircraft, and from where Bannon stood, his hand clamped to the handhold above his head, he could see Private Roney already locking the twin laser cannons onto the lead VTOL.

With a growling roar, the two bulbous-nosed aircraft raced overhead, passing so low over the crawlers that Bannon felt the vibration of their passage through the vehicle. Either they’d broken off the attack run when they’d noticed the turrets zeroing in on them, or they’d intended to make a dry pass in the first place.

Bannon strongly suspected it was the former.

The climb onto the rocky promontory took some doing, and the vehicles rocked and lurched as they moved. The Zolarian air-cushion vehicles were closing fast, and the VTOLs were circling around again.

“Everybody out as soon as we’re halted. Spread out and prepare to defend this position.”

He barely waited for the ramp to drop, hitting the override again to get it open faster. He grabbed an excavator ball on the way out, jogging into a stiff breeze as he cleared the ramp, looking around as Hern’s Third Squad raced out of their crawlers and to the rocks at the edge of the low bluff between them and the settlement. He joined them, activating and tossing his excavator sphere onto the ground in front of him. It spun once, burrowed deep, and then detonated with a heave of dirt, forming a premade fighting position. Similar fountains of dirt and rocks blew out of the ground to either side of him, as Third and First Squads dug their own positions.

Bannon threw himself down into the hole, laying his rifle over the lip and scanning the ground below them. The VTOLs made another pass but still didn’t open fire as the crawler turrets pivoted to track them. The threat of those lasers was still keeping the Zolarian aircraft at bay.

Bannon didn’t think that was going to last.

The armored air-cushion vehicles spread out as they approached the bluff, their own turrets rotating and elevating toward the Corvanite positions. They continued to advance until a pair of thunderclaps overhead made them halt, and made the VTOLs retreat deeper into the Zolarian zone.

The Zolarians didn’t want to tangle with four Dragon 27s.

“Well, that’s a beautiful sight.” Hern was crouched behind his rifle just off to Bannon’s right.

“I’m not going to relax yet.” Bannon was still watching the vehicles on the ground below. The Zolarians hadn’t dismounted, which was interesting, since no air-cushion vehicle was going to be able to overrun the Corvanite position, not considering the dug-in resistance, operational combat crawlers, and the threat of an imminent airstrike.

“Never, sir.” Hern already had his rifle tilted to deploy the grenade launcher. “Death comes.”

“Let us go and meet it.” Bannon echoed the old Corvanite battle cry almost without thinking, still watching their adversaries.

For a few moments, as the air-cushion IFVs slowed and came to a ragged halt about six hundred yards from the bluffs, Bannon began to think that maybe they’d get out of this without exchanging fire with the Zolarians. He had somewhat mixed feelings about that, but reminded himself that they were outnumbered, air cover notwithstanding, and that neither he nor that Zolarian first sergeant wanted to be manipulated into a fight by some unknown alien agency.

The Zolarians were a little too keyed up, though.

Now the Zolarians did dismount. Their vehicles’ ramps lowered and hardsuited soldiers jogged out, spreading out but still using the armored hulks of the hovercraft for cover. Quite a few rifles were pointed up at the bluffs, and dust was rising in the distance, heralding more vehicles on the way. Bannon glanced up at the sky, wondering how long before the Zolarian starfighters arrived. This could easily spin out of control very quickly.

A moment later it did. A shot cracked out across the open ground, spitting dirt and fragments of rock from where it hit just below Hern’s position.

Half a dozen Corvanite rifles barked in reply, smashing the Zolarian soldier back into the dust. The hardsuit probably stopped a few of the bullets, but one burst through the faceplate, dropping the Zolarian limply to the ground.

First blood had just been drawn.

Time seemed to slow ever so slightly as the body fell, Bannon realizing just what had happened. While a proxy war had been waged for months on Zhogalgan, this was the first time a Corvanite had killed a Zolarian. There was no going back from this.

His emotions were solidly locked behind a wall of dispassionate combat analysis. Surviving the next few minutes was the primary concern now.

With a thunderous crackle, the line of Zolarians opened fire, bullets peppering the rocks in front of the Corvanites. At the same time, the combat lasers in the IFV turrets opened up as well, tracing glowing lines of crackling destruction across the face of the bluffs. As Bannon got behind his rifle and searched for a target, a rock exploded right in front of his face and a shard of glowing stone smacked into his visor, knocking his head back and leaving a scar on the armored plastite.

He shook off the impact. The helmets were designed to cushion a human skull against worse hits.

Shifting his aim, he caught a hardsuited figure dashing forward across open ground, and dumped three shots into the chest and faceplate. The Zolarian crashed onto his face and didn’t move, but then Bannon was forced back down by a blizzard of bullets and laser fire, the ground in front of him erupting into his face again.

A couple of the combat crawlers opened fire with their own lasers, though their positioning wasn’t great. One beam punched a glowing hole in a Zolarian turret, and though it silenced that laser, Bannon doubted it had harmed anyone inside the vehicle.

The drones that popped out of their deployment tubes, on the other hand, were another matter.

Combat drones had come a long way since the early twenty-first century. They were smaller and more agile, and they packed quite a punch. A couple dozen of them swarmed out from the crawlers, each one most likely targeting a Zolarian IFV.

Of course, where drone tech had advanced, so had counter-drone tech, and what looked and sounded like swarms of angry insects spat from launchers alongside the Zolarian turrets, quickly homing in on the drones. Half the drones were blotted out of the sky in the first couple of seconds of flight, detonating in midair as the little counter-drone swarms followed their signals and slammed into them, setting off their tiny shaped charges on impact.

Still, a few got through. Two hovercraft died abruptly, the drones slamming into their turrets with twin flashes, the tooth-rattling thunderclaps rolling across the open country and hitting the bluffs with enough force that Bannon’s teeth hurt, adding to the headache that was starting to build from the blow to his helmet a few seconds before.

Two more hovercraft erupted in titanic explosions as the Dragon 27s roared overhead again, only for one of the Dragons to be struck by a laser from below, the gossamer line of superheated air linking ground and wing for an eyeblink just before a large section of the wing exploded into glowing shards, throwing the starfighter into a spin.

The Zolarians on the ground quickly scattered, the surviving IFVs rising on their fans and scuttling back and to right and left, popping disruptive smoke as they moved. The fight continued even as another wave of combat drones buzzed into the air overhead. The growl of engines would have been drowned out completely by the continuing exchange of fire if not for the vibration through the ground. The combat crawlers began to appear off to the flanks, though Bannon could only tell because a voice bellowed across the all-forces comm net.

“All Corvanite and Zolarian forces, cease fire!”

Almost immediately, the Corvanites stopped shooting. The combat drones were recalled, swarming back to their combat crawlers and settling into their launch cradles. A few didn’t make it, as the counter-drone swarms couldn’t be shut down even if the Zolarians had wanted to.

Which they didn’t. The Zolarians kept up their assault, raking the bluffs with gunfire and lasers. The Dragons were coming around again, joined this time by a flight of Griffon 80 VTOLs.

“Zolarian forces, cease fire and stand down or you will be annihilated to a man.” Captain Haarot’s voice was hard and brooked no argument. “I have authorization to level everything to the north of our position, and two artillery batteries are already zeroed.”

The incoming fire still didn’t die down immediately. Another laser exploded a rock just past Lewiski’s shoulder, hammering the Corvanites with glowing shards of shattered stone.

Bannon couldn’t hear the distant thumps of the rocket-assisted artillery as it launched, but he could hear the whistling scream of the shells coming down out of the sky. They slammed into the ground with earthquake force, sending up massive geysers of gray and black soil and smoke, shaking the entire settlement with their impacts.

“The next salvo won’t be a warning. Stand down.”

Slowly, the fire from the Zolarian formations died down. The disruptive smoke started to dissipate, revealing the crushed remains of destroyed IFVs and at least a dozen hardsuited bodies sprawled in unnatural positions on the ground.

Haarot’s voice came over the company comms. “One Zero Two Three, fall back to Phase Line Delta Seven.”

Bannon, his head pounding, began to climb out of his fighting position, though he still kept his rifle ready and his eye on the Zolarians below. He didn’t trust that the fight was over, and so as he stepped back from his fighting position, he was still facing the enemy.

“Squad sergeants. Let me know when you’re up.”

“This is Summ. I have two casualties. Moving them back to the crawlers.”

Bannon noted this with a cold, distant anger as he watched the Zolarians below, waiting for one of them to start it again. He wouldn’t forget that two of his men were maimed or dead because the Zolarians hadn’t been able to abide by a truce.

“This is Killian. One KIA. Loading up now.”

“Hern. We’ve got some walking wounded, but we’re up.”

Bannon finally moved back to his crawler. There was some visible damage, scarring on the front glacis from small arms and a glancing hit from a laser. He filed that away for later.

When he got inside, lifting the ramp behind him, he could see the tac display and saw that Haarot hadn’t just brought the rest of the company. There was a full cavalry phalanx on their flanks, the squat Minotaur 34 tanks keeping their railguns trained on the Zolarian vehicles. What looked like an entire squadron of Griffon 80s was now circling overhead, their nose-mounted, twin-linked cannons pivoting to track targets locked on the ground.

That the Zolarian VTOLs hadn’t returned was interesting, especially considering the considerable formation of air-cushion IFVs and tanks that were still moving, surrounding the settlement and spreading out to the flanks.

That was Captain Haarot’s concern. With casualties to take care of, and orders to retreat, Bannon wasn’t going to try to push the matter. Hopefully withdrawing his phalanx might even defuse the situation a little.

He threw himself into his bucket seat behind the driver’s compartment, next to the gunner’s chair, and stared at the tac display holo, barely seeing it through the haze of rage that he fought to keep under control. His comm chimed as the crawler lurched down the hill, putting the bluffs between Third Phalanx and the Zolarians. It was a private channel call from Captain Haarot.

“Bannon.”

“Once you reach the phase line, stand by for VTOL pickup. There’s a shuttle waiting for you back at the FOB. Commander Fox will want your personal report on this, Lieutenant.” Haarot paused. “Don’t screw it up.”

Bannon acknowledged as the survivors of Third Phalanx formed up, now covered from enemy fire by the terrain, and rolled toward the designated pickup. He wanted to ask Summ and Killian who they’d lost, but knew that putting that out on the comms might not be the best idea.

A whole new war had just come to Zhogalgan, and unless something drastic happened, it was going to spread like wildfire for light years in all directions.

CHAPTER 27

Draven ripped his helmet off as he stepped down his blower’s ramp and onto the cold, dusty ground of Outpost Regula. He stared up at the sky, wondering if the specks of reflected light he saw in the indigo of the zenith were Corvanite or Zolarian starships. Or even Eurasian.

Are you happy now, you bastards?

He shook his head as he moved toward the Operations Center. With Captain Thill’s body still cooling in the ambulance blower, he was now responsible for reporting to Colonel Demooth about the absolute debacle that had begun as a quick reaction force response to an attack.

Technically, it should have been Lieutenant First Class Schuyler, who was the acting company commander now that Captain Thill was dead, a victim of his own recklessness. The bullet that had punched through the captain’s visor had been one of the first shots fired, just after Samez had come to the unfortunate conclusion that Captain Thill’s insistence on cutting the Corvanites off had been the same as a weapons free order. But as soon as they’d reached Outpost Regula, leaving Dog and Easy Companies to hold down the remains of the settlement, word had reached them from Colonel Demooth that he wanted Draven to report in.

Immediately upon arriving at Regula.

That was the part that had Draven nervous. That, and the fact that he’d been ordered to report to the regimental commander rather than his battalion commander, Major Fordyce.

It was most of a kilometer walk from the company area to the command center. He passed the neatly laid-out honeycomb of company areas and motor pools, the half-buried landing pits for the orbital shuttles, and the primary aerospace defense array, which hadn’t been erected until two months after the base had been established. An otuchan airstrike had necessitated that, something the original planners had apparently thought wouldn’t happen, especially so deep inside human territory.

Now he suspected the battery was more focused on Corvanite and Eurasian threats than otuchan. Which probably wasn’t going to end well. The otuchans might not be getting a steady supply of off-world arms anymore, but the humans would forget about them at their peril.

Amazing, the things you think about while you’re walking a klick to probably be busted down and sent to the asteroid mines as a scapegoat. Never see Emily again. Never see the kids again. Just breaking rocks in zero G to cover for the officers.

He couldn’t help it. Despite the fact that he’d never try for officer rank, and he simply didn’t have the connections to get enough votes to get a commission, he’d been in the business of the Army for almost his entire adult life. He’d been on fourteen different worlds at last count, and had seen countless actions, all the time learning and doing his utmost to make the mission happen. He was a senior noncom. Most of the time, he had to act despite the actual “leadership,” and that had made him more of an expert in tactics and strategy than anyone would publicly admit. It was where his mind went naturally, crisis or no.

And this was a crisis; there was no doubt of that in his mind.

The command post was another prefab cylinder, brought down via heavy lift shuttle and carefully tipped over on its side with cranes. The hatches were at either end, the sides shored up with flash-formed bricks made of local soil. Antennas sprouted from the center of the structure, flanked by add-on modules that had been erected after Colonel Demooth had set up his headquarters on Outpost Regula. The guards at the hatch on the north end were in immaculate hardsuits, their rifles held at port arms. They had to devote hours a day to maintenance to keep the ever-present dust off that armor.

“First Sergeant Draven here to see Colonel Demooth.” He was fairly sure that his arrival was expected, but there was protocol to observe.

It was interesting, in a distant sort of way, how protocol and hierarchy had survived in the Grand Army, despite the continuing attempts to make the institution more “democratic.” Of course, that was just a buzzword for making sure the “right” people got commissions.

“I’ll need to see some identification, First Sergeant.” The guard to his left stepped forward, lowering his weapon to hang on its sling in front of him.

Draven produced his ID chit, currently installed in his gauntlet. There were more advanced ways of confirming a citizen’s identity, but those had tended to break down when faced with the dust and combat stress of Zhogalgan.

Funny, that. Even after all these centuries, some things just never did work right.

“You’re cleared to go in, First Sergeant.” The guard returned to his post, lifting his weapon to port arms again. “The colonel told us to expect you.”

That might sound more ominous than the guard intended, but Draven just nodded and headed inside, the door irising open as the guard tapped a control on his gauntlet.

Draven had seen the remote auto doors malfunction enough on Zhogalgan that he unconsciously held his breath as he stepped through. But the doors didn’t try to cut him in half, so he breathed again, his helmet under his arm, as he headed for the colonel’s office.

The bulk of the cylinder was taken up with the main regional operations center, and he had to go through that first. A huge holo tank in the center dominated the room, and a low murmur of comm traffic formed a faint background hum as he walked past, getting nods from other noncoms. There weren’t any officers in here at the moment.

He paused just long enough to take in the holo display. It didn’t look good. There were a lot of Corvanite forces moving toward the DMZ, and almost as many Zolarian. The unfortunate incident seemed to be precipitating exactly the situation he’d hoped to avoid by letting that Corvanite lieutenant go.

He reached the colonel’s door and knocked. “First Sergeant Draven, reporting, sir.”

“Enter.” He stepped through the door as it slid open, stiffening to attention as he did so.

Colonel Demooth was a small man, slightly stooped, his hair already gone white. He looked more like a scholar than a soldier, though that shouldn’t surprise anyone around the commissioned ranks. Only those who really wanted to push for a heroic reputation put themselves out into the field and cultivated the martial image, with the skills and fitness necessary to uphold it.

There was something different about Colonel Demooth, though. After all, he’d been regimental commander for almost forty-five thousand hours, and he had done nothing—that Draven had heard about, anyway—to try to advance out of that position.

“Secure the door, First Sergeant. And take a seat.” Colonel Demooth didn’t get up but leaned his elbows on his desk. It was a relatively bare-bones office, with a field desk, two holo displays, and a flatscreen display. There was nothing to declare the colonel’s achievements or connections, which was another oddity about him.

Draven dutifully sealed the door and pulled up the relatively comfortable field chair, sitting stiffly with his helmet on his knee. He wasn’t sure what to do or say, especially as the colonel continued to study him in silence.

“Do you know why you’re here, First Sergeant?” Demooth’s voice was low and gentle, like a kindly grandfather. If anything, that made Draven even more nervous.

“No, sir, I don’t.” He decided honesty was going to be the best policy. If he was going to be condemned to break rocks on an airless asteroid for the rest of his life, at least he’d face it like a man. “Lieutenant Schuyler is the acting company commander.”

“Oh, it was Schuyler who got it? Interesting.” The colonel rubbed his chin with one hand. “He’s not exactly the most senior.” He looked keenly at Draven and shook his head. “I know. But consider anything said in this office as being in confidence, First Sergeant. So, perhaps, if you were to observe that Lieutenant First Class Schuyler has some very wealthy family connections on Aube, I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone, let alone disciplining you for it.”

That didn’t make Draven as comfortable as it was probably supposed to.

Colonel Demooth sighed. “I’m told you were the first one on the scene, First Sergeant. Why don’t you start there? Tell me everything that happened.”

Draven paused. “I have to ask, sir, just why I am here reporting to you, instead of someone higher up in the chain of command.”

The colonel eyed him for a moment, and Draven wondered if he hadn’t overstepped himself. But then Demooth glanced down at his desk and shrugged. “I suppose I did bring it up first, didn’t I?” He looked up and stared at Draven, unblinking. It was a curiously intense stare coming from such a mild-mannered-seeming man. “You are here, First Sergeant, because I know my officers. I want the story from someone who doesn’t have political aspirations on Zolah, Fortunato, Aube, or anywhere else. Fair enough?”

“Understood, sir.” Draven sensed that he could still end up in trouble, but the colonel seemed to want to put him at ease.

He launched into the story, as complete and detailed as he could make it. The discovery of Second Platoon’s bodies and destroyed vehicles, along with the dead locals. The arrival of the Corvanites, and the lieutenant’s story about the strange alien craft. The colonel didn’t react when Draven described letting the Corvanites leave, followed by Captain Thill’s arrival and insistence on intercepting them, which had ended disastrously.

Colonel Demooth was staring at some point over Draven’s shoulder as he finished, his fingers steepled in front of him. He didn’t move or make a sound for a long moment, while Draven waited uncomfortably.

Draven realized he wasn’t that afraid anymore. Sending him to mine asteroids might assuage the mob, but it was more likely they’d just quietly retire him.

Finally, Demooth looked directly at him again. “You’re certain the Corvanites didn’t commit the massacre?”

“As certain as I can be, sir.” He knew he was on thin ice, but Demooth hadn’t given him any warning signs yet. “There was no sign of vehicle or foot movement from the Corvanite side of the DMZ.”

“It could have been an air attack, with the ground troops sent in to assess the damage.”

“It’s possible, sir, but given what they’ve done so far, how likely is it that they’d test a new weapon on the locals they’ve generally sided with against the otuchans, instead of on the otuchans themselves?”

Demooth raised an eyebrow, tapping his fingers against his chin. “You make a good point. Though not one, perhaps, all that politically astute at the moment. Unfortunately, the alternative explanation involves a spacer’s tale about an unknown alien spacecraft that no one detected. Not on radar, lidar, or visual.”

“No one detected any Corvanite airstrike either, sir.”

“True.” Demooth sighed. “Not that it matters, after today.”

“Sir?”

The colonel leaned back in his chair. “We’ve been standing on the precipice of an interstellar war since the Corvanites arrived on Zhogalgan, First Sergeant.” He sighed again. “In truth, ever since the people decided to send us here, this close to Corvan Prime.”

Close was a relative term, but Zhogalgan was far closer to the Corvanite home system than any other world within the Zolarian orbit.

“The people thought we could wage it subtly. Maneuver the Corvanites into a corner.” Demooth shook his head. “That certainly didn’t work. Now blood has been spilled, and there’s no going back.” He stood, and Draven shot to his feet. “Thank you for the information, First Sergeant. I hope I don’t have to tell you that this conversation does not leave this room.”

“That’s entirely clear, sir.” Draven had stiffened to attention. The debriefing was over, and with it the personable atmosphere. Now he was a noncom speaking to a senior officer once again.

“Good.” Demooth studied him for a moment. “I know your company has taken a beating. I can’t guarantee you replacements, but I’ll speak to Major Fordyce about getting you a replacement company commander. I don’t know that Schuyler is prepared for what’s coming.” The colonel’s eyes got far away again. “Consolidate as best you can and prepare to move on a moment’s notice. Dismissed, First Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.” Since they were deployed, there were no salutes, even inside. Draven turned on his heel and marched out, almost forgetting to unseal the door before he opened it.

CHAPTER 28

The shuttle that was waiting was a UOH-4, a small personnel hopper, not a drop shuttle. A slender, sleek cone sitting on four landing struts, it wouldn’t take the whole phalanx.

Bannon turned to the rest of the phalanx. “Squad sergeants, bring it in.”

Summ hurried over, his face drawn. Yen and Fernan were dead. Yen had been killed instantly by a laser to the top of the skull, and Fernan had died of his wounds, despite frantic casualty care in the crawler on the way. Summ stood at parade rest and waited in silence.

Hern was still talking quietly with his squad, his voice pitched low so that Bannon couldn’t hear him. He got nods before turning and walking over to join Bannon and Summ. Hern being Hern, his face was grim, but he seemed much more collected than Summ. Hern had seen some rough actions over the years. Summ had, too, but the younger man was still not quite as hardened to it as his peers.

Killian came over last, his face stony. Of the three of them, Bannon was least worried about Killian. If ever there was an NCO who exemplified what it meant to be a Corvanite, it was him.

Bannon looked around at his squad sergeants. “How are the boys holding up?”

Killian crossed his arms. “They’re torqued off. So am I.” He started to get heated, more than Bannon thought he’d ever seen Killian get. “We’ve known we’re at war with these cophead turtles ever since we found their weapons in otuchan hands. But we still backed off and tried to start a cease-fire instead of grinding them into the dust.”

Bannon looked at Hern and Summ. “Is that the consensus?”

Hern nodded. Summ glanced between Hern and Killian, then did the same. “It just feels like we’re dancing around the problem, sir.”

“That’s what happens when we find ourselves on the edge of an interstellar war.” It suddenly struck Bannon just how young some of his men were. There was a reason why the officer ranks only opened up to those with years of experience in the Corvanite forces. He’d been there, chafing at the restrictions passed down from on high. He could certainly understand their frustration now, and he shared some of it. “Don’t forget that thing we saw fly over out in no man’s land, too. There’s more going on here, and Commander Fox doesn’t want to commit the entire Council to a major war until he understands just what the situation is.” He raised an eyebrow as he looked at the three of them. “It’s not our call to make, anyway. We’re not a bunch of cophead Zolarian turtles debating our feelings or voting about what we want to do.”

Summ was looking at the dirt. Hern nodded grimly. Killian stayed stone-faced, standing possibly a little more stiffly, as if he’d been called on the carpet. He probably didn’t appreciate the comparison to the Zolarians.

They’d been raised to take as much pride in their discipline as in their courage. The entirety of Corvanite society revolved around duty. This was a harsh universe that lay under threat because of a lack of discipline, along with moral cowardice, that had resulted in not following through to truly end the first human interstellar wars. Bannon appealed directly to that reverence for discipline.

“I’m supposed to report to Commander Fox and brief him on everything we saw. I don’t know what he’s going to decide, but the entire phalanx needs to be reset and ready for action by the time I get dirtside again. The dead will keep on ice until we can properly pay our respects.” He fixed each squad sergeant with his gaze. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re right, Killian. I don’t think there really is any going back, not after today. But time will tell. We can only be prepared and do our duty. Death comes.”

“Let us go and meet it.” There was a note of resignation in the echoing response.

Bannon nodded. “Dismissed.” He watched his subordinates turn, not without a few deep breaths, and head back to their squads to pass the word, before he turned on his heel and strode toward the shuttle.

***

The acceleration eased as the shuttle rose higher, and Bannon watched the limb of the planet fall away beneath him. He hadn’t had much time or opportunity to just look at his surroundings for a while, and this shuttle at least had viewports. The curve of the planet was already becoming more noticeable, the atmosphere a faint blue haze above the mottled gray and grayish green, broken only by the white of the icecaps and the faint blue glitter of the small landlocked seas that were the only open water on the planet’s surface.

It was a deceptively placid view, given what was going on down there.

Bannon scanned the hemisphere below him, but he saw none of the flashes that might herald battles—or the strange blue lights that preceded the appearance of that alien craft. Turning his eyes toward the sky, he saw a few glittering lights in the blackness of space. They weren’t stars; the sun was blotting out every star in the sky, making deep space a nearly uniform blackness. Those lights were starships, shuttles, and starfighters, all reflecting the light of the small, distant sun. The orbitals were getting downright crowded.

The shuttle continued to rise toward a cluster of those lights, which slowly resolved into a complex formation of ships, mostly elongated cones, some segmented into multiple sections. Corvanite starship design followed a certain utilitarian philosophy, though it still looked sleek, mainly for the purpose of presenting a smaller target profile to an enemy ship’s weapons, not to mention micrometeorites at higher velocities.

The Thunderer was a fourth-generation ship, a seven-hundred-foot-long main cone with three cylindrical sections joined by short, thick booms aft. Her radiators were fully deployed around the engine section, glittering in the sunlight. Bannon got a good look at her just before the shuttle rotated to begin the rendezvous burns. He felt the jolts as the thrusters began firing, matching orbits with the Thunderer, while his view turned to the utter blackness above, and he leaned back in his acceleration couch, trying to focus his thoughts on the briefing to come.

The shuttle passed inside the docking bay, blocking out the view of the sky as the docking claws took hold with distant clunks heard through the hull. The last bit of motion died away, and Bannon gulped as he finally felt zero G for the first time in months.

“We’re hard docked, Lieutenant.” The crew chief had been mostly silent on the way up. “Mag boots are by the hatch if you need them.”

Bannon nodded his thanks and reached over to grab a pair of the mag boots before he unclipped from his acceleration couch. He hadn’t been planetside so long that he couldn’t maneuver in zero G, but he wasn’t going to keep Commander Fox waiting while he got reacclimated to weightlessness.

Clipping the mag boots on, he got himself oriented and headed through the hatch.

The embarkation area was a massive cavern surrounding the ship’s central spine. There were still drop shuttles and some vehicles docked there, though the vehicles appeared to be out of their containment cells for maintenance… or preparation for a drop. Most of the hardware was below, on the ground, however, and probably already moving toward the DMZ.

Bannon wondered what the otuchans were doing, now that the peacekeepers were entirely focused on each other.

It felt like a long walk to the central spine and the ladderwells that circled it. Since the ship wasn’t under acceleration, he switched off his mag boots as he gripped the ladder, then propelled himself toward the nose, reaching out to grab a rung and pull himself along again every few dozen feet, more to make sure he didn’t drift into the walls than anything else. It took only seconds to reach the senior officers’ deck. He caught himself, oriented his body on the hatch, and reactivated the mag boots in time to step out and return the duty NCO’s salute.

“Lieutenant Bannon, 102nd Company, reporting to Commander Fox as ordered.”

As soon as Bannon cut his salute, the duty sergeant waved him toward a nearby hatch. “You’re expected, sir. I think the commander was tracking your shuttle all the way from the surface.”

Bannon just nodded and clunked his way over to the hatch. It slid open before he reached it.

“Come in, Lieutenant.”

Bannon knew better than to simply walk into the commander’s office and make himself at home, no matter how genial the invitation had sounded. He marched through, planted himself one pace in front of Commander Fox’s desk, straightened to attention, and announced, “Lieutenant Bannon reporting as ordered, sir.”

“At ease, Lieutenant.” Commander Fox was a giant of a man who wore his head shaved. His shoulders filled his uniform tightly, and his massive hands, folded on the desk in front of him despite the lack of gravity, looked like they could crush a man’s skull unassisted. “You know why you’re here, I assume.”

“Captain Haarot briefed me, sir.”

Fox nodded. “Give me what you have, then.”

Reaching into his uniform pocket, Bannon drew out the memory chit with the recordings of the alien spacecraft and handed them across. He was reasonably certain they’d already been transmitted to the Thunderer by encrypted uplink, but he had brought the chit just in case. Fox took it impassively, then folded his massive arms and waited.

Beginning with the flashes he’d seen just before executing the Eurasian special operations team, Bannon sketched out the series of events and sightings, leading up to the attempt to follow the alien craft and the massacre that they’d found at the end of that attempt.

Fox listened stony-faced, giving nothing away.

When Bannon finished, there was a long moment of silence. “Is that all, Lieutenant?”

Fox was still unreadable.

“All that I can recall, sir.”

Fox nodded, then activated his mag boots and stood. He paced to the side table near his desk, staring at the small terminal secured to it. “I’m sure there are those who would dismiss your account as spacer’s tales, Lieutenant. That ship isn’t otuchan or thelon.” He must have sensed Bannon’s reaction, because he turned to look at him. “Oh, yes. There are a few thelon worlds out this way. The most recent was discovered by a Relontan ship only a few years ago, and it was almost a disaster. The thelons have not been sitting still since the last Thelon War. Their expansion has been quiet and measured, but it is happening.

“That is beside our current point, however. That ship was almost certainly not thelon in origin.” He turned the viewer on the terminal to where Bannon could see it. “This is one of the ships observed over Dalou.” The ship pictured on the viewer was a fairly typical thelon design, a rough egg shape with blisters arranged around it in a pattern that looked odd to Bannon’s eye, though he wasn’t an engineer, let alone a thelon engineer. It looked nothing like the ship he’d seen over no man’s land.

“Now, at the risk of undermining my standing with my subordinates by pushing spacer’s tales…” Fox changed the image. “How much does that look like what you saw?” He beckoned Bannon closer to get a good look.

The image had been taken overlooking the limb of a planet, a gas giant from the looks of it. Sunlight blazed on the striped green-and-blue clouds below, silhouetting a dark shape near the limb itself.

Distance made it difficult to make out details. The shape was similar to the craft that Third Phalanx had seen above no man’s land, but not identical. It was a dark, oblong shape, with a faint bulge at one end.

Fox brought up another image, this one slightly higher definition. The object visible against the surface of a small moon was not the same ship, but with the better view, Bannon could see the familiar texture that they’d observed on the smaller craft.

“That’s not the ship I saw, but it looks like it was made by the same people.”

Fox nodded. “These ships have been sighted from time to time across known space. No one knows where they come from, who operates them, or even how they arrive and seemingly disappear. No one has ever seen one come through a wormhole emergence point. That has led most of the galaxy to dismiss them as nothing but legends and spacer’s tales.”

“I know what I saw, sir.”

“I’m not doubting you, Lieutenant. Intelligence believes they are real. Just far more advanced, technologically, than anyone we know of. Even the chyotsu.” He frowned at the image on the screen. “There’s another factor. A pattern that has been dismissed as superstition, but Intelligence believes it to be verifiable. Wherever these ships appear, wars tend to break out.”

The commander’s words hung in the air.

“So,” Bannon said. “My suspicion would seem to be accurate. That someone else is pushing us, and they destroyed that village precisely to get the reaction that resulted.”

Fox nodded. “So it would seem.”

Bannon stared at the image of the alien ghost ship on the screen. “What do we do?”

“Unfortunately, there is little we can do.” Fox shut off the terminal and returned to his desk. Since it seemed appropriate, Bannon stepped back to his position of parade rest in front of the desk. In zero G, it was every bit as easy as sitting.

“Are we just going to let it happen, sir? Let some unknown aliens manipulate us?”

Fox eyed him narrowly, and Bannon stiffened slightly, in case he’d overstepped himself. “It’s more complicated than that, Lieutenant, and as an officer, you should understand that.”

The commander watched him closely, and Bannon realized he was supposed to figure it out himself. Fortunately or unfortunately, he was already a good way along. “We can’t appear to back down, now that the Zolarians have killed three of my men.”

“That’s part of it.” Fox seemed somewhat satisfied that his junior officer had reached a correct conclusion, if not the correct conclusion. “This was always going to be an explosive situation. The Zolarians didn’t intervene here out of the kindness of their hearts. Those hedonistic demagogues couldn’t care less about diaspora otuchans or a handful of descendants of shipwreck survivors on a barely habitable rock parsecs away from their ‘democratic paradise.’” He snorted. “No, they came here because this world is less than fifty light years from Corvan Prime, giving them an outpost closer to our homeworld than any of their other satellites. They might not be Newlanders, but they’re not their enemies, either.”

He folded his massive hands in front of him. “Now imagine what the Council, or the Zolarians, would think if we presented a story about ghost ships in this system, let alone that they are actually somehow behind the conflict.” He shook his head in disgust. “We’d be accused of cowardice at best, pushing superstition and spacer’s tales to give us an excuse to back down in front of the Zolarians.”

Bannon understood. “Which would be disastrous.”

“Indeed.” Fox straightened a little at his desk, and Bannon stiffened to attention again. “I appreciate your intel, Lieutenant, and we aren’t going to ignore it. However, any operational reaction to the presence of these ghost ships will be limited to what we can spare, when we can spare it, since we now have to deal with a conflict with the Zolarians as well as with the otuchans. Since you have some personal experience with these unknown aliens—at least, more than anyone else in the system at the moment, to my knowledge—your phalanx will be high on the list to be called upon if something actionable comes up, but expect to be dealing with the Zolarians first and foremost.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

***

The shuttle’s stair lowered and Bannon walked down through the clouds of vapor from the pad’s cooling system to find Captain Haarot waiting next to the landing pad. The man stood ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind his back, unfazed by the waves of heat still coming off the shuttle’s thrust bells.

He waited as Bannon approached, then turned away, beckoning Bannon to join him. “What did the commander have to say?”

Bannon gave a brief description of the conversation. Haarot listened impassively, staring straight ahead as the two of them left the launch area and headed for the 102nd Company’s encampment on the south side of the FOB.

“So he’s reached about the same conclusion I have,” Haarot said.

Bannon nodded grimly. “A war is now inevitable. Too inevitable to do anything about the unknown faction instigating it.”

“We’ll see about that.” Haarot looked around as if to see whether there was anyone else within earshot. “I might agree with the commander that the war with the Zolarians is inevitable. In fact, I’d go one step farther and say that it began as soon as they dropped weapons to the otuchans. That doesn’t mean these other aliens aren’t a threat, though.” He pinned Bannon with a familiar, icy stare. “Your phalanx is still my designated special operations unit. In fact, you’re now the designated special reconnaissance phalanx for the entire sector. I’ve spoken with Captain Reed. The Zolarians are our primary concern at the moment, but if there are any other sightings, I still might pull you and your boys to go check it out.”

Haarot had always carried a certain grimness in his demeanor, accentuated by the scar that twisted his mouth into a permanent sneer. Yet there was a deeper gravity to the way he met Bannon’s gaze now. “We don’t know who these creatures are or what they want, but they want us and the Zolarians at each other’s throats, and they’ve already killed to make it happen. I will not ignore a threat like that, and Captain Reed agrees.”

He turned toward the company headquarters. “Be prepared to flex, however. There have already been two more incidents at the DMZ. Things are getting hot.” He strode onward, his eyes fixed straight ahead. “One way or another, death is coming.”

“Then we will go and meet it, sir.”

Bannon just hoped that he could do so with as much conviction as the old war cry demanded.

CHAPTER 29

Draven watched Captain Sotero speak, tuning out most of the words and letting his mind wander to everything that needed to get done.

Sotero was a step up from Thill, but he was still every bit the political animal that his successor had been, as had become evident within the first five minutes of speaking to him. Unlike Thill, Sotero was eager to get his hands into the everyday operation of the company, but it had quickly come about that he was interested because he wanted the glory of being the lynchpin of the offensive that ultimately drove the Corvanites off the planet.

Given that they had lost a platoon and a half in the space of a few hours, and they were currently staged well back from the DMZ as a quick reaction force, Draven didn’t think that was very likely. Still, he had to let the captain drone on in what he thought was an inspiring way while Draven worked out the logistics of keeping this deeply shaken band of men and women together.

As much as he desperately wanted to hate the Corvanites for the soldiers they’d killed—and, to a lesser extent, the vehicles they’d destroyed, which were irreplaceable this far out—Draven knew that as soon as he ceased to be an honest man, his usefulness as a noncom would come to an end. It was Captain Thill who had gotten those men and women killed, as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger himself.

Draven still believed in the mission. Still believed in checking the Corvanites’ endless aggression. But this was a hell of a way to go about it.

Sotero was beginning to wax poetic about the future of a free and peaceful Zhogalgan when he was interrupted by the alert comm.

“… incoming. Repeat, incoming aircraft coming from the south. They have not responded to challenges and appear to be on an attack trajectory.”

“Everyone to cover!” Draven activated his hardsuit’s exterior speakers, his voice booming out over the drill field, drowning out whatever Captain Sotero wanted to say next. “Move!”

He suited actions to words, stepping up and grabbing Captain Sotero by the arm and dragging him toward the nearest blower. There were air defense bunkers set up—those had been standard since the first otuchan air attacks, several thousand hours ago—but the blower was closer.

And it could shoot back.

He shoved Sotero up the ramp and into a seat in the rear of the vehicle before sliding into the gunner’s seat, activating the turret, and pivoting it toward the western horizon.

It took a second for the display to flicker to life as the lasers powered up. The alert comm was still repeating over and over in his helmet. Here on base, they weren’t going to get the up-to-date tactical comms; that was something he’d fought the Operations Center over, but it had been deemed too much to allow the quick reaction force to listen in on all tactical comm channels until they were deemed necessary.

He passed a pair of specks and then pivoted back toward them. They resolved into a pair of the predatory Corvanite VTOL gunships, their wide, drooping wings blending into the spines of their stubby fuselages. There were pods underneath those wings, he saw as he zoomed in, locking one of the aircraft into the lasers’ targeting.

Then he was nearly blinded by the white-hot streaks of light that stabbed from the pods toward the ground.

The cataclysmic booms rolled across the base, and one of the air defense batteries exploded, impaled for a split second on one of the brilliant beams. Draven couldn’t help but blink in shock. Since when do the Corvanites have something like that?

Then he thought of smoking holes punched through armored blowers, and the people inside blasted into mush.

He pivoted the turrets toward the aircraft again. He had to reacquire them, since the brief flashes had blinded the sensors as well as his eyes. The planes were moving fast, having now approached low enough that they were almost on top of the base by the time they cleared the horizon.

They weren’t nearly fast enough to evade a laser, though.

The first pulse caught the lead ship in the tail. The energy dump was so immediate that it was less of a melt and more of an explosion. The tail shattered into glowing fragments in a heartbeat. The jet dipped, almost recovered, then lost control and spun into the ground just on the other side of the base, hitting with a flash and a crack that seemed to almost split the sky. The shock wave shook even the blower where Draven sat.

The second gunship was still racing away, though it was already starting to bank to come around. Something told Draven not to get too fixated on it, and he pivoted the turret back around to the west.

The line of aircraft coming over the horizon crossed the entire screen. They were still quite a few kilometers away, but they were closing fast, and there were too many to try to knock down individually before they were within weapons range. Draven turned off the tracking function, set the crosshairs close to the farthest western aircraft, and proceeded to rake the entire formation with rapid-fire laser pulses.

Most of them went off into space, doing nothing. A couple hit, but only glancingly.

One took a gunship right in the cockpit.

There was something strange about the explosion that rocked the gunship. Draven wasn’t sure precisely what, just that something bothered him about it.

Then more of the brilliant streaks connected gunships with the ground, and the interior of the base turned into an inferno.

The shock waves slammed into the blower, actually knocking the heavy vehicle backward about half a meter, despite the fact that it was grounded on its skirts. Even inside, cocooned in armor, Draven felt the devastating blows as habs were gutted, the ends blowing out as bolts punched into their roofs, and more vehicles were similarly cored out by the raging energy raining from the sky.

He couldn’t even hear the gunships go by overhead.

Pivoting the turret once again, even as another gunship hit the dirt with yet another titanic flash and crack that shook the ground, he picked up the gunships, this time as they banked hard to come around quickly toward the base.

The base, and his blower, sitting out in the center of the vehicle yard.

For a split second he considered holding his ground and fighting. But something told him that would be suicide. So he slid out of the gunner’s seat, grabbed Captain Sotero again, and threw both of them out of the blower—just before a brilliant, impossible bolt of energy linked gunship and blower, punching through the armor plating almost as if it wasn’t there, and igniting the air inside. Both hardsuited men were thrown flat on the ground as searing heat washed over them.

Draven thought he might have blacked out for a moment. He felt pain, but it was a distant ache—for now. Without looking at himself or the captain, he shoved himself up onto all fours, grabbed Sotero, and dragged him toward the nearest bunker. It was a brutal movement, especially since it took the captain about five meters to get his own feet under him, and those eye-searing bolts continued to hammer into the base, destroying communications gear and vehicles.

Draven didn’t have any reason to trust that the bunker was going to hold up to those beams any better than the blower had, but they needed to get to some cover.

The door was shut, but Draven had the overrides already installed in his gauntlet. He opened the door, shoved the captain inside as three other Zolarian soldiers scrambled out of the way, then glanced up at the sky one more time before diving through the opening after him. The gunships were beginning another run. Half the base was already smoking ruins, and the heat was already making the air ripple. He could imagine this was what it had felt like to Yusuko’s platoon.

Then he ducked inside the bunker and hit the override again, allowing the door to slam back into its place just before the ground shook with the impacts of more strange weapons fire.

“Well,” Sotero said. For the first time, Draven realized that Captain Sotero didn’t have his helmet on. It was somewhere out there in the burning wreckage of the base. “I don’t think there’s any doubt any longer what happened to Second Platoon.” He turned a reddened, begrimed face toward Draven. Some of his hair, already cut short, had been singed by the heat of the blast that had destroyed the blower. “Are you regretting letting those Corvanites go now, First Sergeant?”

Draven ignored the sneer. Survival was the first and foremost priority at the moment. Plus the other survivors in the bunker didn’t need to listen to a dispute between the captain and his senior NCO. “Sir, we can play the blame game later, but right now we need immediate starfighter support, or we’re all going to be dead in the next few minutes.”

That caught Sotero off guard. He blinked at Draven for a moment, his train of thought apparently derailed. “Oh. Yes. Of course.” He then seemed to realize that he didn’t have his helmet, which limited his comm connection abilities.

Draven went to the center of the bunker, where a simple but robust comm terminal had been installed. It was part of the modular bunker core, otherwise it probably wouldn’t have been there, just from a logistical standpoint. He fired up the console, gritting his teeth as he did so, hoping that the base’s comm infrastructure wasn’t already so thoroughly destroyed that they couldn’t get a link to the starships in orbit. The first screen seemed to work fine, asking for a clearance code, which he successfully entered, but his hopes were dashed a moment later.

Connection Failed.

The gunships must have targeted the antennas. There was no link to the starships, nor to any other Zolarian base on the planet, either by radio or laser link. They were cut off—and entirely at the mercy of the gunships, not to mention any follow-on ground forces.

He didn’t think that Corvanite ground forces were their most immediate concern, though, not this far from the DMZ. And the more he thought about it, the more he doubted those were Corvanite gunships at all. There was something strange about those aircraft, something he couldn’t yet put his finger on. And his earlier logic about why the Corvanites would have held back using these weapons on the otuchans still echoed in his mind. It didn’t make any sense. He might not trust the Corvanites, but he’d seen enough of them to know that they were extremely logical, albeit in a strict, rigid, militaristic way. Possibly more so than his own Zolarian people.

“We have no comms with the Fraternity, or any other ship.” He stepped back from the console as the bunker shook again from another strike. “They took out the comm tower.”

A shadow of fear flickered across Sotero’s face, but he quickly composed himself. “If we can’t contact support, then we’ll have to consolidate and fight back.”

Draven shook his head. “They already took out the main air defense battery. The blowers were the only other chance we had, and we already saw how that worked out. Unless we could get every one of them manned and coordinated, they’ll just get picked off, one by one.” He waved at the sealed door. “But if you want, you could run out there and try to find another one before you get turned into red mist, sir.”

It was a challenge, and Sotero knew it. It was also one that he wasn’t willing to take up. He wanted the glory of leading a company to crush the Corvanites and drive them off the planet. Giving his life in a possibly futile attempt to defend the base against an air attack wasn’t the sort of glory he had in mind. There was no way to leverage that into political capital back on Zolah.

Sotero turned away and settled on one of the benches set into the side of the bunker. Like all the other Zolarian defensive works, the bunker had started as a container dropped from orbit, with a cement shell made from the local dirt constructed around it. The benches were as built-in as the comms console. If he was being honest, Draven might have preferred the Corvanite approach of constructing their defenses almost entirely from local materials. It certainly would have been logistically less costly. At the same time, though, he had to appreciate the comfort.

That comfort seemed hollow as the base was being taken apart around them.

Though as he listened, he thought he could hear the booms of the weapon strikes getting more sporadic. Soon he was sure that the fire was dying down, and then it ceased altogether.

Sotero’s head came up. “They’ve stopped.”

“Stay put.” Draven’s voice cracked through the sudden quiet inside the bunker, as well as over his suit comm. The other soldiers looked from him to the captain, clearly wondering just what was going to come of this. Captain Sotero had already challenged Draven in front of them, and he had the rank to make it stick. “We don’t know that they’re gone yet, and if I were them, I’d circle a few more times to see if anyone comes crawling out of the rubble.”

Sotero glanced up at the ceiling, forgetting his image for the moment as he seemed to wonder if there was a VTOL gunship hovering overhead. He nodded, subsiding almost as quickly as he’d jumped to blame Draven for giving the Corvanites a pass.

The quiet stretched out, and Draven peered out of the small, periscopic ports to try to see if there were still any gunships in the area. All he saw was drifting smoke and rippling heat haze.

Finally, he keyed his comm on the company frequency. “This is First Sergeant Draven. All bunkers report in.”

“This is Sergeant Al Tabaq. I am at Bunker Two Able. I have twelve soldiers, two wounded. The bunker is intact, and I believe we can get out.”

One by one, the rest of the surviving company noncoms checked in. Captain Sotero, for his part, had gathered himself, and had stepped over to the central comm station to see if he could get at least short-range links to contact his officers. The short-range comm antennas were built into the bunker, and even damaged, they should be able to reach that far.

Finally, after Draven had noted with some relief that they’d only lost maybe ten more soldiers, including the base support personnel, he made the call to break seal and venture out. There had been no more weapons fire for almost ten minutes, and he could see no sign of the VTOLs in the sky above the bunkers.

He didn’t need the override this time. The control on the inside worked, although the door opened slowly, with a grinding noise that hadn’t been there before.

Stepping outside, he took in the destruction. The attack seemed to have been focused on the static defenses and command and control facilities, but several of the vehicles were smoking too, and he didn’t doubt that he’d find neat, scorched holes punched clear through their armor.

“Platoon sergeants! Assemble on me!” There was a lot of work to do.

***

It was after dark before Draven was satisfied that their position was once again defensible. Al Tabaq’s and Ferrier’s communications noncoms were working on getting a workable comm rig together to contact Regional Operations or one of the starships in orbit. Draven had been glancing up from time to time as they worked to consolidate vehicles, scavenge parts from those that they could, and get some semblance of air defenses back up. The glimmering specks of starships in orbit were occasionally visible, and after what had happened down below, Draven expected at any moment to see brighter flares as a space battle broke out. So far, however, there had been nothing.

That was deepening his sense of unease. If the Corvanites were going to launch a general offensive across the DMZ, they wouldn’t do it halfway. Which meant that either this wasn’t a general offensive, or it was already over.

He doubted the latter. Even if they’d accomplished complete surprise, the Grand Fleet wouldn’t go down so quickly.

Then again, how long could they hold out against weapons like that?

His gaze drifted down from the sky to the low ground outside the base, where the first gunship he’d shot down had crashed. That had been quite a blast for a Corvanite VTOL. It might be because of the advanced weapons. There was no doubt some kind of powerful—and therefore highly volatile—power source behind those bolts.

“Sergeant Al Tabaq!” Captain Sotero might object to this, but Draven needed to figure this out. And if there was anything salvageable on that wreckage, they might be able to use it. “Give me a fireteam!”

Al Tabaq didn’t ask questions, though Captain Sotero looked up with a frown. The captain’s helmet still hadn’t been found. It was probably a fused lump of titanium and synthetic somewhere in the wreckage.

Within a few moments, Draven had Al Tabaq and four more of his platoon armed up and in their hardsuits, and they were heading out through the north gate. Several of the base personnel had gotten back into cobbled-together defensive positions on either side of the gate, which had been barricaded with wreckage and several of the base’s utility vehicles. Only one seemed to still be running, and it rolled back to let the fireteam through.

They spread out in a rough wedge as they cleared the gateway, and then Draven heard footsteps crunching behind them. When he looked back, Captain Sotero was striding out to join them, a rifle in his hands and a set expression on his face.

He didn’t try to stop them. He just stepped up next to Draven. “Well? Let’s go, First Sergeant.”

Draven didn’t speak, but simply continued on toward the crash site, catching Al Tabaq’s visor turned toward him. On the one hand, having a commanding officer who was willing to put his own life on the line was an improvement. On the other…

How often have you met an officer who knows about much other than politics?

Well, here’s an opportunity to teach him. If he’s going to be a political mover and shaker, maybe you can help mold one who isn’t quite so arrogant.

The path down to the valley below wasn’t particularly even or easy footing, especially not in hardsuits. They were much lighter than some of the earlier ones, including the Mark XI that Draven had first been issued many tens of thousands of hours ago, but he found himself envying the Corvanites their “mobility over protection” philosophy.

There was no more smoke rising from the crash site, though it was noticeably hotter. He checked his visor display, and there was some elevated radiation, though not enough to tell Captain Sotero he needed to stay back. Whatever had gone up, it had been remarkably clean.

The crater was sizeable enough that Draven was already having his doubts that they were going to find much in the way of wreckage. This entire sortie was starting to look useless.

Until he stepped over the lip of the crater and looked down.

The craft was remarkably intact, though it had burst amidships from the explosion.

It was also definitely not a Corvanite VTOL.

Draven’s frown deepened as he climbed down toward the strange craft. It was roughly cylindrical, tapering toward a rounded nose and tail. What might have been thrust ports circled the tail, though they looked far smaller than any air or spacecraft drives he’d ever seen. Short pylons extended from the fuselage, tipped by pods that must have been the weapons. One of those pods had been shredded, an explosion having blasted most of it into fragments that were embedded in the side of the crater.

“What is that?”

The shock in Captain Sotero’s voice wasn’t exactly becoming for an officer in the Grand Army, but it was understandable. They were suddenly being confronted by the very strangeness that that Corvanite lieutenant had described.

“I don’t know, sir, but it’s not Corvanite. I’m fairly certain of that.” Draven circled the wreckage, looking closely at the strange, twisted texture of the hull. It had definitely been designed that way and wasn’t a result of the crash or the explosion.

“If that’s not Corvanite…” Sotero’s voice trailed off as he tried to process what he was looking at.

“Then I was right, and someone really is trying to trigger a general war between us. Going so far as to stage what was supposed to look like a Corvanite airstrike on this base.” Draven halted a few meters from the wreckage. The display in his visor said the radiation levels were still within acceptable limits, but something warned him not to get too close. The wreck was alien enough that he had no way of knowing what sort of nasty surprises might be hidden inside.

Sotero was standing higher up, looking like he felt the same unease, especially without a helmet. “I think I owe you an apology, First Sergeant.” That was a surprise. “Unfortunately, I doubt this will affect anything. If it was intended to accelerate events, then it might fail in that respect, but after the fight near the DMZ, and several incidents since, we seem to already be locked into a path to war.”

“We still need to record everything here and send it to Region Command.” Draven’s anger was starting to build. He had no idea who or what had built or sent this craft, but he didn’t like being deceived. His integrity demanded that he send the intel up the chain. That it might be a pointless gesture didn’t matter.

“I’m not disagreeing, First Sergeant.” Gingerly, Captain Sotero started down the side of the crater. “I’m just being realistic.”

He was probably more right than Draven wanted to imagine he was.

CHAPTER 30

Captain Tomas was looking at a situation rapidly spinning out of control.

Orbits had been shifting for the last several days. As things stood now, the Corvanite and Zolarian ships were clustered in opposing orbits, the bulk of the planet between the two task groups. That alone wasn’t a good sign. The Zolarians had started to maneuver first, following the fight just north of the DMZ. The entire Corvanite peacekeeping force and their support elements had been briefed on that encounter, though what exactly had happened down there remained a mystery.

Given the repeated bursts of what appeared to be Cherenkov radiation around the planet over the last few days, Tomas had his theories, but until they were confirmed by word from Commander Fox, he was going to keep them to himself.

The ships in higher orbits were currently the only ones with line of sight on any of the Zolarian formations, and that was at shallow angles that didn’t allow for much decent surveillance. The Eurasian ships, joined by another six cruisers from Shangxi and Rostov, were now a respectable task force of their own, in a low, fast orbit that minimized their exposure to either Corvanite or Zolarian forces and put them in a position to strike and disappear over the limb of the planet quickly, if they timed it right. There had been no further communication with the Concordium ships, and that was also concerning.

Tomas was watching the holo tank, the plot a tangle of orbital trajectories and ship symbols in varying shades of red and amber. The Thunderer was at General Quarters, as was the rest of the task group. A courier had left for the wormhole emergence point six hours before and was still on boost, almost catching up with the Zolarian ship that was going the same direction. That could get dangerous very quickly, as their trajectories were set to intersect before they reached the wormhole. The Zolarians were boosting at a steady one G, while the Corvanites, true to their nature, had ramped up to one-point-five.

They were beyond his ability to help, and therefore outside of his sphere of concern. He still couldn’t help but check their progress occasionally.

The click of mag boots drew him out of his reverie. He was unsurprised to see that it was Sergeant Keel standing at his elbow. “What is it, Keel?”

By way of answer, the NCO reached out and tapped a control for the holo tank, bringing up a groundside view from one of the starship’s telescopes. The angle was shallow, but not so shallow that Tomas couldn’t see what was going on. It would be another thirty to forty minutes before the target area was over the horizon.

Tomas sighed. No bad news was particularly surprising anymore. “It stands to reason. Anyone who thinks that the otuchans are stupid or easily intimidated just because their tech is crude is a fool.”

The view showed another otuchan war camp, only this was far, far bigger than the one that the phalanx from the 102nd Company had disrupted with a starfighter strike while capturing the chief of an otuchan phratry. That one had been about six phratries’ worth of warbands. This was easily ten times as many, with rank upon rank of crawlers, ranging from the small, three-wheeled fast-attack vehicles to the really big nine-wheeled monsters, some mounting both cannon and missile launchers. They were even building multiple landing strips and already had some of their angular, chisel-nosed aircraft, both prop and jet, on the ground. There were also several hulking vehicles topped by boxy conglomerations of launch tubes that had to be rocket artillery lined up at one edge of the encampment.

This was a major offensive, and it was getting close to ready to launch.

“The peacekeeping forces that are in their way start to go to war with each other, so the otuchans prepare to move,” Keel said, sounding disgusted. “I’d lay good odds in the ship’s pool that they wait until things get really hot, then try to steamroll everyone.”

“No bet.” Tomas knew better than to gamble with the crew, though he was notorious among the other starship captains. He rubbed his chin, then unstrapped and activated his mag boots. “Lieutenant Samson! You have control. I’m going to speak to Commander Fox.”

He didn’t get far from the command chair before an alert tone clanged through the command center. “This is Lightning Two-Three. I just got hit with a targeting lidar.”

The starfighters were on a constant alert rotation, one squadron per ship always deployed, forming a cloud twenty miles wide around each starship. Lightning Two-Three was one of the outriders, on a slightly higher orbit than the Thunderer, which necessitated constant maneuvering to maintain distance.

A moment later, the alert board lit up. Tomas dragged himself back into his chair and strapped in again. “All weapons live. Find me who just targeted Lightning Two-Three.”

The fighters were already starting to maneuver, random thruster bursts making them jink across the sky. The pilots had trained to make their movements as off-pattern as possible, making it next to impossible for a computer to predict where the fighter would be within a few seconds. Added to the extensive electronic warfare suites that were already warmed up and ready to turn most sensors to hash, and even deploy chaff if need be, it made the fighters extremely hard to kill at a distance.

Extremely hard, but not impossible.

“Contact.” Keel had raced back to his station, deactivating his mag boots and launching himself across the command center. “Appears to be a Zolarian cruiser, twenty degrees above the horizon.” There was a pause, and Tomas could hear the frown in Keel’s next words. “It does not appear to be in orbit, but is on a powered, high-velocity trajectory that will overtake the formation in twenty-five minutes.”

The ship popped up in the holo plot along with a gossamer line showing its trajectory—one that would cross the Corvanite orbit shortly. It was surrounded by a swarm of fireflies that had to be deployed fighters.

“Alert Level One. Battle stations. Weapons, get me a firing solution on that ship. All fighters, prepare to engage.”

The otuchans on the surface would have to wait.

The Thunderer wasn’t the only ship to have noticed the oncoming Zolarian cruiser. The rest of the Corvanite starships were already beginning to maneuver, spreading out and giving themselves room, some rotating to bring their central, spine-mounted particle beams to bear.

“Get me an ID on that ship.”

Standing orders were still weighted toward caution. The Council was adamant that the Zolarians had to make the first move. While first blood had been drawn, and the Zolarians were increasingly paying little attention to the peacekeeping mission and massing forces at the DMZ, that zone still had not been crossed, and they hadn’t fired a shot since the firefight that had brought the longstanding tension to a head. In Tomas’s view, the Council’s decision was a disturbingly political one from a body that he had grown up believing was firmly dedicated to standing up to any aggressor, anywhere within its reach.

When he didn’t get a reply at once, he looked over at the scanner station. “Keel?”

Keel was frowning at the displays. “I don’t have one, sir. There’s no matching signature in the database, the ship’s not broadcasting any ID—not that they would if this was a combat sortie—and we can’t make out any markings on the hull.”

Something about that sent a chill up Tomas’s spine, and he suddenly thought of those anomalous bursts of Cherenkov radiation again. What is going on in this system?

He shook his head. “Open a channel on the joint operations frequency. Hopefully they’re listening.”

He watched the trace as the starship—still under thrust and accelerating well past escape velocity—continued to close in. Its fighters were accelerating at the same rate, and that deepened his frown. Starfighters were an artifact of the necessity to spread a ship’s weapons constellation out, along with the unreliability of AI or remote connections in the intense electronic warfare environment of modern warfare. They were limited, however, especially when it came to range and delta-V. That was why they were usually recalled when the mothership was going to engage in any major maneuvering, mostly leaving orbit.

Yet this ship’s fighters were following along while it was under thrust and heading up out of the Zhogalgan gravity well.

A light in the holo tank indicated that the comms were open. “Zolarian ship, this is the Thunderer. You are entering a Corvanite exclusion zone. Power down your engines and recall your fighters.”

There was no response, at least not over comms. The threat board suddenly lit up with targeting warnings.

“Full countermeasures. Lightnings, you are weapons free. Tactical, get me a firing solution on that ship and get it out of my sky.”

The holo fuzzed a little bit as the electronic jamming went into high gear. The fighters, all now effectively flying backward along their orbits, popped chaff canisters, which acted primarily as decoys. In extremis, they could put out enough particulates to disrupt laser or particle weapons, or even score a kill on a kinetic projectile, but then they’d obscure the fighters’ weapons as well.

The sheer amount of electromagnetic noise that modern jammers could put out made optical sensors that much more vital, and so the plot shifted to display the images from one of the Thunderer’s multiple telescopes. Even as the image stabilized, multiple faint lines of red scored through the clouds of chaff just below the Thunderer. They might even have hit, except that Lieutenant Matthews, at the helm, was already working the thrusters. The movement slammed Tomas partly to one side, but it worked.

The fighters were already engaging, though the lasers were invisible in space except where one of them flared against one of the sleek Zolarian fighters. For a moment the hit didn’t seem to faze the ship, but then it ceased acceleration and began to drift behind the rest, blazing on infrared.

“Main particle beam cannon and lasers three through seven locked on target.” Lieutenant Beauregard had his hands poised on the weapons controls that were built into his acceleration couch. Most controls had to be set up that way, because maneuvering under thrust could get pretty violent.

Before Tomas could give the weapons free order, a series of hammer blows reverberated through the ship. “Particle beam hits on sections one-twelve, two-seventeen, and the boom between the main hull and Support One.” Matthews was watching the same displays as Tomas, but sometimes it was a good idea to make sure details got noticed, especially in combat. “Minor hull breach in one-twelve. Damage to ablative armor elsewhere. Rotating.” The image in the plot spun as Matthews maneuvered to put the damaged sections on the side of the ship away from the target.

That also disrupted Beauregard’s weapons lock, but he was quick to get it back, and Tomas didn’t wait. The red circles of weapons locks moved back onto the oncoming starship, which was getting closer by the second, overtaking the Corvanite ships. “Weapons free, Lieutenant.”

He felt the thrum of the main particle cannon as a faint tingle and rising hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, as if he were standing on a mountainside on Corvan Major as a thunderstorm drew closer. The Zolarian ship flared as the stream of relativistic ions slammed into it. The visual was disrupted a moment later as Matthews had to maneuver yet again, if only to mitigate the damage as more laser beams clawed at the Thunderer’s hull.

When the visual feed steadied again, the Zolarian ship was getting close to coming almost alongside the Corvanite formation, if almost two hundred miles lower. That ship had to be under almost two Gs of acceleration.

It also appeared unscathed by the direct particle beam hit.

That wasn’t normal.

The fighters were now fully engaged, and more lasers flared against hulls, decoys, and chaff clouds. Lightning Two-Seven took a direct hit and broke apart, too fast for the pilot to get out, if he hadn’t already been immolated by the beam. The rest of the Corvanite ships had taken the Zolarian cruiser under fire by that point, but the acceleration curve seemed to be making it difficult to hit. More of the fighters flashed into glowing fragments under the pummeling of laser and particle beam fire.

Then the Zolarian ship was past, still riding a blue tail of drive flame, still accelerating out from the planetary ecliptic paced by its handful of remaining fighters. Laser and particle beams lashed out, and as the Thunderer rotated to track the enemy starship with her spine-mounted particle cannon, she shuddered as several more hits blasted bits of her ablative armor into space.

Tomas brought up the comms to Commander Fox, who appeared in a small window in the main plot. “Sir, there’s something off about that ship. If the Zolarians really intended to start a fight, they wouldn’t send only one ship. It’s not behaving like a Zolarian cruiser, either. The Zolarians don’t just rush through a gauntlet of laser and particle cannon fire like that, and even if they did, we should have cut them to pieces. This is either a new, experimental ship, in which case we need to run it down, or there’s something else going on here. Request permission to break orbit and pursue.” Even as he spoke, the cruiser was pulling away even faster, as if it had increased its acceleration.

He still didn’t want to bring up what he suspected about those mysterious bursts of Cherenkov radiation, but there was enough strange about that ship that he had to wonder.

“I’m seeing the same thing, Captain, and I have my theories.” Fox sounded grim. “Permission granted. I’ll hand overall command to Captain Lewis on the Relentless, in case we get too far out to coordinate.” His own frown was as deep as Tomas’s. “The Zolarians are reporting what they claim are Corvanite airstrikes on some of their facilities planetside—only, unless someone down there didn’t follow orders, that wasn’t us.” He paused, his eyes narrowed as he let Tomas put the pieces together. “Provocations in space and on the ground, by attackers that mysteriously look like Corvanite or Zolarian forces, while no one can account for them? You’re right, Captain. Something is very off. Get us moving as soon as those fighters are back aboard.” He disappeared from the plot.

“Recall all fighters, secure for acceleration.” That last shouldn’t take long; all decks were supposed to be secure for combat maneuvers already, which could be far more violent and unpredictable than steady acceleration.

Some weapons fire was still flickering through space, and the Inflexible took a bad hit, an explosion blowing out one of her propellant tanks and ripping down her flank. She started to spin under the strain, and even as the Thunderer’s drives lit and acceleration started to press him into his command chair, Tomas couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty for leaving Captain Martinez behind. He shook it off. They weren’t fleeing. They were hunting.

The planet fell behind as the Thunderer accelerated into the dark, following the bright points of blue flame that were the mystery ship’s drive flares.

CHAPTER 31

It felt odd operating without the crawlers, but Bannon didn’t mind it that much. This was proper reconnaissance work, with more of a chance of going undetected than if they’d been driving around in Chariot 72s.

Just behind Summ and Adamas, he moved carefully along the military crest of the ridge that paralleled the Asygys River, one of the most significant obstacles on the DMZ. For reasons that Bannon hadn’t begun to analyze, the vegetation around that river was different from that of most any other area in the human territories. Thicker and with more variety, the grayish color of the local chlorophyll analog was bluer here, the leaves wider and thinner. That vegetation was making movement more difficult, but it also made concealment easier.

He glanced up at the sky, lightening slightly in the east. Several bright specks were visible, starships catching the morning sunlight in low orbit. He hadn’t seen any action up there yet, but it seemed like it was only a matter of time.

It had been a hell of a couple of days. Reports from orbital observers of an apparent air attack on a Zolarian support base had thrown every single plan to hell. Zolarian starfighters had started to push the line of the DMZ, and more and more Zolarian ground forces apparently decided to abandon their peacekeeping patrols—except for a handful of skeleton-crew units—in favor of massing at the edge of the DMZ facing the Corvanites. The strange alien ship appeared to have been forgotten, as the more immediate threat had to be dealt with.

That brought Third Phalanx, 102nd Company, out to the flank of the DMZ, tasked with getting ground reconnaissance of this zone near where the DMZ met no man’s land, a zone that had gone suddenly dark to drone recon about ten hours before.

Bannon had his suspicions about the sudden loss of every drone that flew into this area, but he reminded himself that this was a reconnaissance mission. Thirteen years of active combat service had taught him that recon required a complete disengagement of personal theories. They were here to gather information and send it back, not to interpret or color it in any way.

He had run into leaders who’d tried to interpret what was significant and what wasn’t while on recon. It hadn’t gone well.

Adamas slowed, looking at the terrain and the map before glancing back at Summ. The entire squad had taken cover as soon as he’d slowed, and Bannon had moved up to join Summ a few yards behind Adamas.

“We’re at the crossover point.” Summ was already sure of it, even as Adamas was double-checking their position. While Corvanite operational philosophy stressed the old-school, non-tech skills, they still had built-in tools in their helmet visors to make things like resections—allowing an accurate position check based on mapped terrain without resorting to orbital signals—much easier than the manual methods.

Apparently satisfied that they were in the right spot, Adamas looked back at Summ and Bannon and pointed up, over the crest of the ridge. The “military crest” that they’d been following was an imaginary line just below the actual ridge, which allowed for relatively easy travel while keeping them completely concealed from prying eyes on the other side and not silhouetted against the sky to eyes on either side. Their uniforms, as simple as they appeared to be, were carefully formulated to dampen their thermal and electromagnetic signatures, but that wasn’t going to do them any good if they were clearly visible.

Now, however, it was time to go over that ridgeline and see what there was to see.

Bannon brought up the control board strapped to his forearm and tapped the controls to link to his helmet visor even as he held up a fist to tell Adamas not to move just yet. The board was connected to a small module installed in the top of his pack, which was searching for signals—any signals, including the faint traces of strange transmissions that they had picked up when that alien ship had flown overhead, though they had only noticed them later.

While the ridgeline dispersed and blocked some of the signals, there was definitely something over there. The limited collection program couldn’t tell what—that was generally for the intelligence nerds back at base or aboard the Thunderer—but all that Bannon needed at the moment was confirmation that they weren’t going to stare at more empty country, and that they needed to be cautious.

He shut off the feed, clearing his visor. It was possible to throw so much information up in front of his eyes that he might not see something important in the real world. It was a weakness that most Corvanite officers were well aware of, which was why he’d been warned about it upon first pinning on Lieutenant after Ka-Tos.

With Summ beside him, he got up and moved to join Adamas. “There are signal sources somewhere on the other side of the ridge. Move carefully.”

Adamas nodded, glancing toward the crest. He flexed his hands around his CR-196 and then started up.

Summ and Bannon waited, getting back to their patrol dispersion as Adamas climbed. But just before reaching the top, the point man found a cleft in the rocks overshadowed by spiny, almost coniferous trees and quickly took cover.

Something was wrong. He wasn’t supposed to have stopped there. They still had nearly a mile to go before they reached their intended observation point.

Bannon moved up to overtake Summ and join Adamas. The man was peering through the cleft in the rocks while signaling with one hand for Bannon to slow down and approach carefully. Bannon knew better than to ignore the younger man’s warning. He might have years more experience across half a dozen more worlds than Adamas had ever seen, but he’d also supervised the point man’s training.

Keeping his rifle in one hand and steadying himself in a low crouch with the other, Bannon worked his way up to the top of the ridgeline, to a point where he could see over and into the valley below.

He didn’t even need to see all the way down to the river—just to the craft hovering above the river. It appeared to be a Zolarian heavy VTOL, though a model that Bannon hadn’t seen on Zhogalgan before. It was held aloft by four massive articulated thrusters, and it was drifting toward the ridge.

So that’s how they’re going to cross the river here. That had been one of the larger concerns he’d been briefed on. The drone black zone didn’t make a whole lot of sense if the Zolarians were going to attempt a ground crossing where the river gorge was at its deepest and the terrain was particularly harsh. Their air-cushion vehicles wouldn’t be able to manage it any better than the Corvanite or otuchan crawlers—in fact, they’d probably have a worse time.

But if they were flying across using heavy VTOLs, that would make sense.

The aircraft wasn’t moving terribly fast. It seemed to be mainly just drifting across, probably needing to use most of its thrust to stay aloft. That meant it was really heavily loaded.

Staying as low as he could get, and wishing he’d had time to deploy his camo shroud, Bannon eased into a smaller cleft, off to Adamas’s right. Summ was working his way up behind Adamas; he had already gotten the rest of the squad to cover farther down the slope. From this angle Bannon could see past the heavy VTOL, to see that it wasn’t alone. Two more were rising from what appeared to be a large, if hastily constructed, staging area. There was enough space there for a reinforced battalion.

And if the way those VTOLs were flying was any indication, there was easily that number aboard, coming across the river into the DMZ.

“Get the long-range comms up. Now.” There was almost no way that the Zolarians weren’t going to pick up on the transmission, even if they couldn’t read it, but Commander Fox needed to be warned about this. There had been some shifting of forces to back the recon element up, given the drone black zone, which had been a warning in and of itself, but until now there had been too many concentrations of Zolarian forces along the DMZ to devote too much to any one spot, especially since the Corvanites were still taking their responsibilities to keep the otuchans from massacring the humans seriously.

Private Mack was the squad comms operator, and he scrambled up at Summ’s hand signal, dragging his pack with the deceptively small box in it. It didn’t take him long to get the antenna up, though without orbital assistance, this might take some trial and error.

Comms had advanced a long way over the centuries, but there were certain realities about the electromagnetic spectrum, especially on a world with a relatively weak magnetic field like Zhogalgan, that simply had never been gotten around. And it still wasn’t logistically feasible to equip every squad with a quantum entanglement communicator. So they were using slightly more advanced, efficient versions of the very same radios their ancestors had used in wars on Earth, centuries before.

“Get a link with Captain Haarot’s CC.” Bannon turned his attention back to the oncoming VTOLs. They weren’t moving quickly, and they weren’t going to pass directly over the phalanx’s position, but they were still closing faster than Bannon was comfortable with. He could feel the rumble as the lead VTOL passed over the ridge, those vertical thrusters growling so deep that they shook the ground as it went by.

He glanced down at Mack. “Any time, Private.”

Mack was frantically working the controls. “I’m not getting any links at all, sir.” There was a frantic desperation in his voice. “I should be able to get a link with someone nearby, but I’m getting nothing.”

“Try the Thunderer.” An orbital transmission was going to be higher power and more easily detected, but the second VTOL was already over the ridge. The warning had to get out, and soon.

Mack was getting even more frantic. “I can’t get a link to anything, sir. Not a ship, not a nearby aircraft, not a nearby ground unit. It’s like we’re the only ones with a comm on this entire hemisphere.”

Bannon spared one more glance at the Zolarian forces, some of which seemed to be restaging in the walled-in enclosure on the other side of the river. Then he slid down from his perch and scrambled to join Mack. “Let me see.”

The anxious private moved aside from his pack. The comm unit was set into the top, the screen set so that it could be read without being lit from within. It could even interface with helmet visors so that it didn’t put off light in the dark. Bannon bent over the comm unit, running a new attempt at getting a link with any nearby Corvanite comm station. The unit cycled, then three words appeared.

No Stations Found.

Bannon looked up at the sky. The small constellation of bright specks that were too brilliant to be stars—especially during the day, despite the fact that Zhogalgan’s sky never got nearly as blue as Corvan Minor’s—were getting close to the horizon, but they weren’t over it just yet. They should be linked.

“We’re getting jammed.”

Killian was bringing Third Squad up the slope below them. A glance at the third VTOL going by overhead, less than a mile away, told Bannon that it would be a bad idea to try to get on comms, so he waited until Killian looked up, then tapped his shoulder. It was a variation on a very old hand signal for “Team Leaders Up.”

Killian turned to Corporal Hunt, his assistant squad leader, handed the rest of Second Squad over to him, and started to climb.

Bannon didn’t wait for him but moved down to meet up halfway. “We need the message drone. Something’s jamming all comm frequencies.” He didn’t say what he was thinking, but something about the shift in Killian’s expression said that he was thinking the same thing.

Never heard that the Zolarians have the kind of tech to blanket-jam every possible comm link.

And Bannon still didn’t think they had it.

Killian didn’t ask questions, though that set of his jaw said that he had plenty. The urgency of the need to get the message out was pretty obvious, as the last heavy VTOL was already continuing south, flying low and riding its vertical thrusters. That might be another reason why they were flying so slowly. They were trying to stay as low to the ground as possible, and there was only so fast those behemoths could do it without risking a catastrophic crash.

Killian scrambled back down the slope, and moments later he came clambering back up with Private Unger in tow, hauling the message drone. It wasn’t large, but that was part of the point.

Unger handed the small disc over to Bannon, who quickly tapped out the most succinct message he could think of. What appears to be a reinforced Zolarian battalion is heading south over the DMZ from the dark zone. Total comms blackout. No links possible. Will maintain eyes on the situation, but will move to emergency extract in six hours if comms blackout does not lift.

He then hesitated, looking around at his men. They were all alert, in covered and concealed positions as best they could find them. It was unlikely that anyone was going to be able to look down from one of those heavy VTOLs and see them. The ships didn’t have much in the way of windows except in their cockpits.

But if they were detected somehow, fighting their way back to the emergency extract point without comms and air support would be rough—at best.

We should withdraw now. Get back to the emergency extract point and use the other message drone, if we’re still under the comm blackout.

He knew that was the wise course of action. But he decided it was vital they stay and try to figure out what exactly was going on with the comms jamming. Because if by some chance the Zolarians could blanket-jam Corvanite comms, then the entire Corvanite peacekeeping force needed to know about it. Immediately.

He finished the message, hard-coded it, then set the coordinates for the First Phalanx’s last known position. Touching a final control, he tossed it into the air.

Powerful lift fans, whirring quietly, held it in place as it wobbled, then it stabilized and started to zip off toward First Phalanx.

It got less than a hundred yards before it was obliterated by a blinding white bolt of energy.

One that came from somewhere near no man’s land, not over the river.

CHAPTER 32

The entire phalanx flattened themselves into the dirt as the messenger drone turned into an incandescent spray of superhot vapor. The thunderous report of the bolt was louder than any of the VTOLs had been, and its echoes rolled across the rough terrain on either side of the river.

Bannon scrambled back up to the top of the ridge, this time ducking beneath the tree where Adamas was sheltered. If he’d judged the terrain right, he should have line of sight on where that bolt had come from.

As the echoes died down, things got quiet. There was no movement out on the hillside. No sign of anything or anyone that might have taken that shot.

There was something out there, though, and Bannon didn’t think it was Zolarian.

“Summ.”

First Squad’s squad sergeant was at his elbow in seconds.

“Hold here, keep eyes on that embarkation area, and keep trying to get a comms link.” Bannon waited just long enough to get an acknowledgment from Summ before he was moving down to rejoin Killian, who was crouched next to Hern. Third Squad’s leader had come up to find out what was going on, unbidden.

Bannon slid into the cover of a rill in the ground, apparently caused by water runoff during the wet season, and looked at the two squad sergeants. “Hern. Good. You and your boys will take the low ground route.” He pointed. “See that line of trees and rocks at the base of the slide just over from here? That’s where I want you.” He peered over the top of the rill but couldn’t quite see the finger that he’d been sure was where the bolt had come from. He brought out his map. “Killian, you’re with me. We’ll move along the ridgeline until we can get over this finger. I believe that’s where the shot came from.” Tucking the map back into his gear, he looked at his two subordinates. “Cover and concealment, gentlemen. Nobody’s walking away from a hit from that weapon.”

He got nods from both squad sergeants, and then Hern was moving, dashing from rock to rock to get back to Third Squad. Killian already had his squad up and ready to go, though they stayed behind cover as much as possible.

Bannon gave Hern a couple minutes to get his own squad organized and ready to move. In the meantime, he listened and watched the hillside, looking for any sign of the enemy.

Whoever—or whatever—the enemy was.

It was eerily quiet. Even the rumble of the Zolarian VTOLs cruising toward the Corvanite zone was dwindling into the distance. It chafed Bannon to let them go, but without comms, they had no choice. It wasn’t as if they could catch up to the heavy VTOLs on foot and bring them down with rifles and autoguns.

He picked a draw just ahead, got to his feet, and dashed for it, while Killian covered him, his weapon leveled over the rill. It was farther than he’d anticipated, and he felt his heart pounding in his chest as he closed in on the depression in the hillside, waiting for the scorching bolt of energy to blow his head off. It didn’t come, but he berated himself all the same for misjudging his movement as he threw himself behind cover.

He wanted to warn Killian not to go as far as he did, but there wasn’t a good way to do so short of yelling across the hillside. Even if the enemy with the energy weapon knew they were there—and the Zolarians had to know something was happening now, after the destruction of that message drone—there was still no reason to believe that their exact location was compromised. They needed to maintain stealth as much as possible, at least until they were in a more tactically advantageous position.

He rose up from behind cover and leveled his rifle downrange in order to give Killian and Mack some cover as they scrambled along the hillside to join him. As he did so, he saw movement. It was only the faintest flicker, just behind a cluster of trees, but it was definitely movement, and it wasn’t caused by the slight wind that breathed along the side of the ridge.

There was also something strange about it, though he couldn’t place what. He shifted his aim toward where he’d seen it, making sure not to get sucked entirely into his sights, not at first.

As Killian and Mack moved along the slope, whatever it was moved again, rising to point what had to be a weapon at them. Bannon did get on his sights then, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

A trio of shots drove the dimly visible figure back behind cover. On instinct, Bannon moved quickly farther up the depression. The wisdom of the move became obvious a moment later, as another searing bolt of energy turned the ground where he’d been crouched into glowing glass.

More gunfire battered at the source of the bolt as the rest of the squad took up covering fire. Bannon got up and moved again, scrambling out of the depression and dashing as best he could on the uneven, steep ground toward the next bit of cover.

He threw himself behind a rock just as three brilliant bolts strobed overhead, effectively appearing and vanishing like lightning strikes, the crack of their reports reverberating off the stones. The last bolt was entirely too close, exploding a rock only a few yards away from him, and he could feel the heat as well as smell the sharp tang of ozone.

Autogun fire ripped through vegetation, smashed rocks, and spat pulverized dirt into the air. Private Quinones had gotten up to where he could put his weapon to work, and he was doing what he was trained for. Another wild bolt slammed out into the sky, missing the Corvanite positions by a considerable distance, and Quinones intensified his fire, raking the outcrop where the energy blasts had come from with long, stuttering bursts.

Bannon took full advantage. A part of him dreaded facing those energy weapons at point-blank range, but they had to end this. If whoever was shooting at them was also the same group blanking out their comms, that made it even more pressing.

He got up and ran forward, dodging from tree to rock to cleft in the ground, always moving. He threw himself behind cover uphill from the outcropping just as a bolt passed so close that the shock wave knocked him sprawling. His flesh tingled with the nearness of the energy blast.

He was lucky. Private Mack wasn’t.

The bolt took Mack high in the chest, and it completely obliterated his shoulder and most of his neck. He was decapitated, his head still in the helmet as it flew free. What was left of him fell limply to the ground.

Killian dropped into cover beside Bannon. “I’m gonna make them pay for that.”

Mack hadn’t been the first man Killian had lost. Nor was he the first Bannon had lost. They’d learned to shut grief and anger away. The necessities of combat came to the fore and made them both cold, calculating killing machines.

The time to deal with Mack’s death was later.

Bannon pulled a shredder grenade from his gear, armed it, and lobbed it toward the outcropping. At the same time, Killian tossed an omnibanger, pulling his throw just enough so that the two of them didn’t hit in the same place.

The twin thunderclaps shook the hill, and Bannon was already on his feet and going over the outcrop.

His visor’s sensors saw through the obscurant mist, though not with a terribly clear picture. He could see at least one shape down and writhing in pain, apparently wounded by the shredder blast. Two more were scrambling away, and he could see through the obscurant that although they were humanoid, they were neither human nor otuchan. They were slender, with smaller torsos than humans, longer legs, and longer necks.

That was all he could tell through the mist at first, especially as he had to throw himself flat once again as one of the aliens pivoted and brought his weapon to bear as if he could see through the obscurant as clearly as Bannon could. A bolt of energy punched a hole through the mist and scattered much of the rest of it, the ionizing effect hammering at the conductive fog.

Bannon shot back, having dropped prone behind his rifle, sending half of his magazine at the fleeing shapes. They were moving fast, though, and while he thought he’d clipped one, they escaped over the edge of the narrow, rocky finger that ran down at an angle from the main ridgeline.

Killian passed him as he got up, moving cautiously, pushing uphill to find a quicker route across the low ground between the outcropping and the finger where the two aliens had vanished. Bannon had risen to his feet to follow when the wounded alien moved.

Pivoting toward it, Bannon lifted his weapon. The creature had lost a good part of one leg in the blast. Bannon must have landed that shredder closer than he’d thought. But the thing was still reaching for a weapon, and even as Bannon laid his sights on the creature, it grabbed the device and started to try to lift it.

Bannon blew its head off from the top of the outcrop. As soon as it slumped, he turned to follow Killian.

His Second Squad leader had halted at the edge of the finger, still behind his rifle. Bannon dipped a little lower into the draw below the outcropping, fighting to get back up to join Killian, even as most of the rest of the squad had already reached his position.

Coming up beside the senior squad sergeant, Bannon peered over the crest of the finger and saw why he’d stopped.

The two fleeing aliens were already halfway across the little hanging valley, running toward the same craft that they’d seen over no man’s land.

CHAPTER 33

The alert had caught Draven by surprise, and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d always taken some pride in being out in front of the flow of information, but he’d been catching a couple hours’ rest after the nightmare of cobbling together a new react company from a bunch of augments that Regiment had thrown at Able Company after the disaster at the staging base.

They should probably have been stood down and even taken back up to the Fraternity. The body blows that the company had taken lately—almost all of them thanks to the mysterious aliens that were still not being acknowledged as a player by anyone in command—had just about broken them. Sergeants Al Tabaq and Ferrier were still working hard to hold their platoons together, but the men and women were clearly on the edge of breaking down. The brave faces he saw when he checked on each platoon were brittle, with fear and dread haunting more than a few eyes, even as they told their first sergeant what they thought he wanted to hear.

So Draven had been restlessly trying to sleep for a few hours when Captain Sotero had woken him. “Sorry, First Sergeant, but we just got the call.”

Only long-established discipline and habit kept Draven from groaning as he sat up. He wouldn’t show an officer that kind of weakness or give them the satisfaction that they’d gotten under his skin.

Captain Sotero, who had seemed somewhat more subdued since they’d found that wrecked alien craft that had apparently disguised itself as a Corvanite gunship, leaned against the wall of the sleeping pod while Draven swung his legs over the side of his cot. “Regional command got reports of an engagement near the staging area in Sector G.” He turned his data plate around and pointed to an area in the DMZ, in rugged, otherwise uninhabited country, right on the edge of no man’s land. “We’ve been called on to reinforce the remaining support and security element.”

“Wait.” Draven had run a hand over his face. “What do you mean, ‘remaining support and security element’?”

Sotero sighed. “I don’t know if command is ignoring that wreck, or if they just don’t think that alien interference outweighs the fact that the Corvanites have been actively working against the peacekeeping effort here. At any rate, a strike group crossed the DMZ to neutralize several Corvanite staging areas that appear to threaten our positions. Shortly after the heavy VTOLs crossed into the DMZ itself, the remaining troops at the staging area reported weapons fire nearby, and they’re requesting reinforcement.” He’d put the data plate back into his cargo pocket. “I’m afraid that’s us.”

***

Now, an hour later, Draven chewed on an energy tab, his gritty, bloodshot eyes hidden by his helmet visor from his subordinates—and more importantly, the officers—as he watched the increasingly rugged country sweep by underneath the VTOL. We’re still understrength and on the ragged edge of falling apart. What are we supposed to do out here? Especially without our blowers? Not that they had many left. The airstrike had destroyed or crippled all but two of the company’s remaining IFVs, so they were now a thoroughly leg infantry company, like it or not.

He hoped the VTOLs were now dedicated to Able Company, but he hadn’t been able to get a straight answer on that, either.

The picture that was coming together in his head wasn’t a rosy one. That Region Command was sending this threadbare company out to reinforce a unit on the DMZ, when they probably should have been pulled off-world already, told him that someone higher up was getting desperate and wasn’t all that confident that they could take the Corvanites with the forces they had. At least not without completely abandoning the pretense that they were on Zhogalgan to keep the peace between humans and otuchans.

Why are we here, anyway? We halted the killing for a little while, but that only meant the otuchans started building up to fight us, too. We all knew it. Only the Corvanites were actually doing something about it, and because they’re Corvanites, we couldn’t let that happen. Now we’re just going to fight the Corvanites and forget about the human–otuchan war until that’s done?

“Two minutes.” The pilot’s voice echoed in his helmet, the comms linked within the VTOL. “Coming up on the staging area now.”

As the pilot announced their proximity, Draven felt the VTOL dip toward the ground, losing altitude fast. He grabbed the overhead handle, frowning at the sudden drop, but supposedly there was fighting happening not far from the staging area, so the support personnel and their small security force were probably nervous.

He brought up the exterior feed on his data plate. A tall ridge stood on the other side of the Asygys River, though the terrain on the north side wasn’t particularly flat. It looked like the staging area was on the flattest ground available, though even then the landing platform had needed to be shored up by excavation. The VTOLs were flying in just above the treetops in some places, and Draven noticed smoke rising from the far side of that southern ridge. The howl of the aircraft engines drowned out any other sound, so he couldn’t tell if there was active weapons fire over there or not.

His VTOL was the first one down. Sotero’s would be last. He’d have a few minutes to try to get ahead of the captain and figure out what was going on.

He realized, as the aircraft shifted its thrust nozzles and began to slow to a hover above the landing platform, that there wasn’t as much of a hostile note to that thought as there would have been with Thill. Sotero was still out of his depth, a political animal who acted more as a mouthpiece for Command than an actual leader, but he’d been chastened by the discovery of that alien wreck, and he was apparently more invested in the mission and the welfare of his battered troops than he had been before.

The ramp dropped, and half a dozen of Al Tabaq’s soldiers ran out, their weapons at high port, looking around for threats. They relaxed quickly, as Draven had expected them to, though he’d ordered them to be on the alert as soon as they landed. Information about the situation here had been desperately thin, so they’d had no idea what exactly they were getting into.

Draven came down the ramp after Al Tabaq, looking around the landing pad. There were no more than a handful of personnel in sight, and most of them were in the cover of a nearby bunker, one of two hastily erected at the edges of the landing pad. Like most of the rest of the installation, they were barely finished, with a loose covering of local dirt, not even hardened. If the Corvanites hit the place with artillery or airstrikes, he doubted those bunkers would last long.

Most of the other defensive structures on the fence line were in better shape, and from the looks of things, that was where the majority of the remaining personnel were.

“Who’s in charge here?” His amplified voice boomed across the enclosure. The majority of the installation was empty space now that the strike group had moved on, leaving only the external fence built of pre-fab sections hastily clipped together, the bunkers, a fueling facility, drop armory, comm center, and the landing pads.

A figure in a hardsuit stepped out of the nearest bunker, glancing over her shoulder at the ridge before stepping all the way out onto the landing pad. Draven moved to meet her halfway, getting far enough from the VTOL that he thought he could hear the distant rumble and crackle of weapons fire. Maybe. There was still enough noise outside that he couldn’t be sure.

“First Sergeant. Lieutenant Second Class April Dehaan. We’re glad you’re here.” She looked around again. “This was supposed to be a dead sector, which was why the staging area was put here, or at least that was what we were told.”

“What happened?” Draven glanced at Al Tabaq and circled one hand to indicate the whole landing area. Al Tabaq nodded, murmured something to his platoon commander low enough that no one else could hear it, and Lieutenant Borstin shouted for First Platoon to take up defensive positions around the landing area.

Dehaan led Draven toward the half-finished bunker as she spoke. “Everything was quiet at first. We got out here, set up, and started to receive supplies and set up the staging area. Then, just as the heavy VTOLs started to move out to their attack positions, we started hearing weapons fire on the other side of the ridge. We don’t know who it is—we don’t have anyone over there, unless the strike group dropped off a patrol—and we can’t get a drone over the ridge.”

Draven frowned. “What do you mean, you can’t get a drone over the ridge?”

“We tried. Five times.” She sounded exasperated and scared. “They all went dark and crashed as soon as they crossed the river. We don’t know what’s going on.”

The next wave of VTOLs was coming in, and the howl of the thrusters drowned out any chance to respond. Draven peered at the ridge, wondering. He was sure the staging area had plenty of counter-drone devices out, if only to keep the Corvanites from seeing what they were doing on the ground. Disguising the area from the starships in orbit was a different matter, but from what little he’d heard lately, the starship captains had their hands full as the confrontation on the surface had bled up into the orbitals.

Captain Sotero came down the ramp from the next aircraft down, his new helmet on and sealed. He must have pushed his VTOL forward, out of the briefed landing sequence. Not standard for a Zolarian company commander, but he was the captain, so he could make things happen. “What’s the situation?”

The lieutenant saluted—also not standard, but she was rattled—and reported in. Sotero listened solemnly, then nodded, told her to see to her people, and drew Draven aside.

“Thoughts, First Sergeant?”

Draven looked around, entirely too aware of just how much things had changed. “Our orders are to reinforce and provide security for this installation, sir. Not to go after a fight. Frankly, I think we ought to stay put. These boys and girls are in no shape to go hunting after trouble, let alone against unknown adversaries, in that terrain.”

Sotero nodded. “I’m thinking the same.” Something about the tone of his voice told Draven that the captain had actually been looking for his advice, but that wasn’t something a captain could admit to his first sergeant, even in confidence. “See to it that once everyone’s down, we have the defenses well manned and a rotation set up. We could be here a while.”

Draven was just turning to follow the captain’s orders when a voice barked out over the comms. There was no identification, but it sounded like Ferrier.

“Incoming!”

A moment later, the unmistakable, chisel-nosed shape of an otuchan jet roared by overhead.

CHAPTER 34

The alien ship crouched in the valley with what looked like steam coming off its hull in faint waves. The long-limbed aliens had moved to cover around it, though they were holding their fire at the moment, as the Corvanites didn’t give them any targets.

Killian peered over the top of the finger next to Bannon. “It’s your call, sir, but I wouldn’t mind a chance to take that ship and drag some of these bastards in front of command.”

“Which command? Ours or the Zolarians’?”

“Both. Either.” Killian might have been generally taciturn and stoic, but the anger was clear in his voice as he eyed the strange creatures who had killed one of his men. “I hate being shoved around by someone or something I can’t see.”

Bannon nodded. He got it. The mission was what it was, though, and if turning that ship into a crater and killing everything on it was the only way to get comms back, then having solid evidence to present to Commander Fox of alien interference on Zhogalgan was going to have to wait.

He looked over the terrain. It wasn’t promising. There was a considerable amount of open ground between the slope of the finger and the ship, open ground that it was going to be almost impossible to cross without losing more than a few of his men. He wasn’t willing to throw lives away to get to that ship, but he was running out of options.

Looking down the slope, he got Hern’s attention. Pointing to Nguyen, who was already setting his autogun up in the vegetation near the top of the finger, he then pointed back down toward Hern and beckoned. Hern understood, and a moment later Trent was working his way up the finger, keeping the terrain between himself and the alien ship. Trent was strong as all hell, so he made the trip quickly, lugging the heavy autogun with him.

“Set up a base of fire here.” Bannon was painfully aware of how limited their ammunition supply was, since they’d been on foot for several miles from the LZ, and there was no support. But if running the autoguns dry was what it took to get them to that alien ship… “Wait for my signal, then I want them suppressed with everything we’ve got. Getting to that ship and cutting off that jammer is the only way we’re getting out of here and getting word about that strike force back to the rear. We have to move fast.”

“Good to go, sir.” Killian was already moving to get his squad in position. It wouldn’t just be autogun fire focused on that craft. He’d have the whole squad shooting.

Bannon clapped him on the shoulder and dropped back down to the military crest, hustling down to join Hern. Summ was already almost caught up, his squad having dropped down into the lower ground and moving quickly as soon as Killian’s squad had cut off their line of fire. Hern was crouched beneath a spreading crown of spiny bluish vegetation, just out of sight of the alien ship. Not that Bannon believed for a moment that the aliens didn’t know they were there. They just couldn’t hit them with those energy blasts. He hoped.

Hern glanced at him. “Ready when you are, sir.”

With a look up the slope, Bannon caught Killian looking down at them, and pointed a knife hand at the enemy.

Trent and Nguyen opened up with their autoguns just before the rest of Killian’s squad joined in with their rifles. Gunfire crackled and roared, pummeling the alien craft and the aliens’ positions with bullets, and Hern and Bannon went over the top of the finger and headed at a dead sprint down the slope toward their target.

Bannon should have expected what Hern did next. Hardly pausing, the man shouldered his rifle and lobbed a thirty-seven-millimeter grenade at the alien ship, then put his head down and resumed his sprint just behind Bannon.

A bolt of energy cracked through the air, blasting a low tree to smoldering splinters, but Bannon didn’t stop, didn’t do much more than duck and slip to one side despite the flash of heat and the crackling coronal discharge that made his entire side tingle. He hoped and prayed that the bolt hadn’t killed any more of his men, even as one of the autogunners intensified his fire on the position where it had come from.

Both the valley and the ship were slightly smaller than they’d appeared from above. Bannon found himself already within fifty yards of the strange craft when one of the aliens popped up from behind cover, trying to keep a fold in the ground between it and the withering hail of bullets coming from above as it pointed its strange, oblong weapon at the two sprinting Corvanites.

Bannon barely slowed, snapping his rifle up and putting three rounds through the alien’s chest and head. Bluish blood spattered on the rocks and the creature fell backward, twitching.

The covering fire from the hills above had to slacken and shift as the assault force got closer to the ship. That was going to make the next few moments that much more dangerous, but there was a reason why the Corvanite slogan was what it was.

There was an opening into the alien vessel, with something like a ramp, but not quite. It looked more like the ship had a mouth that had opened, lowering its jaw toward the ground. It was every bit as eerie as the rest of the construct. Pivoting toward the opening, Bannon drew a bead on one of the long-limbed creatures, only for Hern to blast it first, sending it onto its back with a trio of shots that walked up its short torso. At the same moment the last of the aliens outside the ship turned toward them, bringing its odd weapon to bear, but a single shot from above took it in the head, blasting through what appeared to be a helmet and spattering more blue fluid against the craft’s hull.

The gunfire fell silent. There were no more targets.

Hern’s squad spread out to either side of Bannon, weapons trained on the ramp. Summ’s squad took up outer security. Killian would keep his boys up high, on overwatch, unless they were needed. That would still have to be signaled by hand and arm signal, since comms still weren’t working.

Bannon looked down at one of the alien bodies. Its torso was short and rounded, almost egg-shaped, its limbs long and wiry. Its neck was nearly as long as Bannon’s forearm, and the head perched atop it was rounded, with a wide mouth, no visible nose, two eyes, and only holes where its ears should have been, low on the base of the skull. This one hadn’t been wearing a helmet, not that it would have saved it.

Bannon had been on many worlds. He knew how to identify most of the spacefaring races, even the ones he’d never met. Yet this one was completely unfamiliar to him.

Well, that was for intel to sort out. It was a big galaxy, and humans had still only seen a tiny fraction of it.

Lifting his weapon, he stepped toward the darkened interior of the alien craft, Hern and Lewiski flanking him.

CHAPTER 35

The otuchan jet was flying a good thousand meters up, but when it banked and began to circle overhead, Draven was sure the pilot was observing the staging area and the VTOLs that were still moving away. It would be impossible to miss them.

A moment later, the situation got immeasurably worse, as the otuchan aircraft came out of its turn and dove toward the nearest VTOL.

Draven keyed his comm. “Carriage Seven, take evasive action now! You are about to come under attack!”

He was too late. Weapons fire thudded in the air above, and the VTOL shuddered under the hits. While otuchan infantry preferred heavy, single-shot weapons, relying more on accuracy and cover than volume of fire, their aircraft used automatic weapons with even heavier projectiles than the infantry rifles. Those projectiles tore through the VTOL’s hull and wings with bright flashes, and something in the hull exploded. Flame and dark smoke belched from the aircraft’s side, and it turned over once before plummeting into the hillside below, striking with a distant boom.

The otuchan attack aircraft wasn’t finished. It was already moving toward the next VTOL.

Draven spun on Lieutenant Dehaan. “Do you have any air defense emplacements here?”

While her visor hid her expression, the brief freeze told Draven that the lieutenant hadn’t thought of that and had been worried only about a ground incursion. Which was foolish, given the terrain, but that was something for Captain Sotero to bring up, if he thought of it.

“There’s a central air defense tower, but I don’t know if it’s functioning.”

With a curse, Draven looked around, finally spotting the tower at the center of the cluster of low structures on the other side of the open vehicle yard. It looked like it had been lowered from a VTOL and set on end like it was supposed to be, but it hadn’t been uncased. Which meant that by the time he got it working, it would probably be too late.

He sprinted toward it anyway. Those VTOLs weren’t equipped to fight an otuchan fixed-wing jet. He heard another one go down as he hit the open yard, and the crackling roar of the otuchan jet’s engine as it swooped toward a third. None of the VTOLs were going to get back if they didn’t get air defenses up quickly. He cursed the complacency that had focused all of the Zolarian air and starfighter support elsewhere, thinking this sector was quiet enough to sneak through, thinking it was better not to risk drawing attention by putting a starfighter patrol over it.

There was no time to call for starfighter support now, even if comms were working well, which they weren’t.

Draven ran as fast as his hardsuit would let him for the air defense tower. Fortunately, the tower was designed to be deployed quickly. He hit the opening switch, and the upper sections of the big cylinder fell away, the quarters slowing as they came level with the ground like metal flower petals. Beneath them, a quad-tube laser pointed at the sky, its targeting dish folded against the top two tubes.

The power cell was integral, so at least he didn’t have to hook that up. He punched the keys for the startup sequence, and the laser tubes rose with a hum, the targeting dish unfolding as the weapons rose up on their gimbal.

He cursed again as the startup sequence ran through its steps. Centuries of computer technology, and they just seem to get slower.

He didn’t look, but heard another VTOL go down as the defense tower initialized. Finally, he had control.

He spun the lasers around, the targeting dish giving him a vibrant, holographic image of the firing cone. The system wasn’t yet calibrated to the proper Friend or Foe configuration, so he was going to have to try to shoot the otuchan ship down manually.

The otuchan jet had pulled up and was climbing away, banking back toward no man’s land to the west, giving the pilot more room to maneuver. The surviving VTOLs were moving away as fast as they could fly, almost skimming the ground, hoping to get lost in the terrain.

Draven pivoted the lasers toward the jet and zoomed in, trying to steady the image. The jet seemed to dance in his targeting reticle.

He fired.

The lasers hummed, and he heard a faint sizzle overhead as the beams superheated what little moisture was in the air. Faint, almost invisible green lines stabbed through the sky, reaching for the otuchan aircraft.

The pulses missed. He could see that as soon as he’d triggered the shot. He shifted as the capacitors recycled, then he fired again.

This time he scored a hit. A brilliant green flare turned into a small explosion, and half of one wing shattered and fell away in glowing shards.

The diaspora otuchans were exceptional engineers, in their way. They could cobble together amazingly durable and functional machines with the bare minimum of materials and tools. But even they couldn’t keep a plane of that design in the air with only half a wing. Spinning out of control, trailing smoke that got thicker and thicker as the port engine caught fire, the otuchan jet spiraled to the ground, where it struck with an oily fireball.

Yet even as the last of the VTOLs disappeared to the northeast, Draven saw that they were hardly out from under the threat. That stricken jet had just been the forward scout. The real strike was the line of dozens more that he now saw just over the western horizon.

“Incoming, incoming, incoming. Everyone get to cover.” He was surprised at how even his voice was as he pivoted the lasers once more to target the next otuchan aircraft.

CHAPTER 36

Captain Tomas watched the plot with narrowed eyes. He still couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at.

The Thunderer was up to two Gs, getting toward the upper limit for sustained acceleration, and yet that unidentified starship was pulling away rapidly. It had to be under four or five Gs already, and unless he missed his guess, it was increasing thrust still further. There was no way that was a standard Zolarian ship. Not unless the Zolarians had discovered some new, physics-defying tech recently, and this was their testbed.

The reports from groundside about strange alien craft that weren’t otuchan or anything else in the known databases were starting to look more and more credible, especially considering the mysterious bursts of Cherenkov radiation he’d been monitoring around the planet and its moons for days. The question was, who were they, and what did they have to gain by getting the Corvanites and Zolarians to fight each other?

That was a question for another time. A time when he didn’t weigh four hundred pounds, and after he’d dealt with this thing that had killed several of his pilots and put holes in his ship’s armor.

“They’re not maneuvering that much. Tell me we have a firing solution.” The words came out as a grunt, despite the fact that two Gs wasn’t all that heavy compared to some of the gravities hit during combat maneuvers. Especially back in the days when he’d flown a Dragon 26.

“We’ve almost had one three times. They’re jamming us more than I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s what we have optical sensors for. You might just have to wing it.” He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath past the weight on his chest. “Get me a hit on that thing.”

“Firing.” The ship thrummed with the energy of the spine-mounted particle beam cannon, and despite the Gs, Tomas felt the hairs on his arms stand on end.

The long-term effects of being that close to the particle beam were still an open question.

In the optical sensors, the beam was practically invisible. In the plot, it was highlighted as a brilliant green-white line that seemed to almost touch the fleeing starship at the edge of the lozenge-shaped drive section.

Seemed to touch. It flashed past, despite how close it had come, and arrowed out into the void before shutting off.

The charged particles would disperse over time and distance. Less than an astronomical unit. From there, their charges would continue to push them apart until they were no longer a coherent beam. Only their relativistic velocity made them an effective weapon at certain ranges.

And they didn’t seem to be effective at all here.

“I was aiming dead center, sir.” Beauregard sounded downright angry. “I can’t have missed.”

“It was still a miss.” The more Tomas watched that ship, the more he wondered. “Try again. Lasers, too.” The lasers packed less punch than the particle beam, but they were faster, and their beam spread was considerably less. They took power away from the particle accelerator, dragging out the pause between shots, but the more firepower they could get on that ship, the better. “Make absolutely sure your aim is dead center.” He was getting even more suspicious. What if that’s a holo shroud? If the actual ship is a different size and shape from what we’re shooting at, that would explain why we haven’t been able to score a good hit on it.

The lasers began to strobe, invisible in the optical display but traced as glowing lines in the plot. Many of them missed, almost as if the ship really was maneuvering, even under that kind of thrust, but several had to have scored hits. A sudden flare, just as the particle beam cannon thrummed again, looked like it might have been a hit, but if it was, it didn’t affect the ship’s trajectory.

The particle beam stabbed out, ghostly green against the black of space, and then the ship vanished.

“What the hell?” Beauregard and Keel echoed each other. Tomas’s eyes narrowed, but he held off on commenting for the moment.

“Helm, cut thrust, bring us about, and set in a return trajectory.” The weight eased almost immediately as Matthews throttled the drives back. “Comms, inform the rest of the task group that we have lost contact with the bogey and are on our way back.” That was going to take a considerable amount of time, but Tomas was less bothered about that fact than he might have been. That time could be useful.

“Commander on deck!”

“At ease.” Commander Fox almost managed to preempt the traditional announcement. He must have started climbing toward the command center before the drives had even cut out. “What the hell happened, Captain? How can a ship just disappear like that?”

Tomas was already bringing the record of the plot back to the point just before the strange ship vanished. “I don’t think it ‘just disappeared,’ sir.” He slowed the replay back as weightlessness finally returned. Commander Fox grabbed hold of a handhold on the overhead, then rotated himself and activated his mag boots as Tomas felt himself tugged against his harness. Matthews was already executing turnover.

“Where did it go, then?”

Tomas was carefully advancing the image in the plot. “There.” He froze it right at the point where the strange starship had vanished.

It hadn’t just disappeared. It had, in fact, flown into a faint swirl of blue light—and then disappeared.

“That’s not possible, is it?” Fox was frowning as he watched the playback, still holding the handle on the overhead. “We’re nowhere near either wormhole emergence point.”

“Ordinarily I’d agree with you, sir, but we saw what we saw.” Tomas pointed at the plot. “That’s a Cherenkov radiation burst, similar enough to what we see at a wormhole transition. And similar enough to a bunch of other unexplained Cherenkov radiation bursts that we’ve been recording around the planet for some time now.”

That sparked a thought. He zoomed out and advanced the plot, entering screening criteria into the computer. Trying to visually scan for what he was looking for was going to be a losing proposition.

“There.” The plot zoomed in and froze on a faint blue flash just over the limb of the far moon. “Unless I miss my guess—which is entirely possible, since we’re dealing with aliens with unknown motivations and capabilities—they dropped into the wormhole here and came out there. The timing’s just about perfect.”

Fox nodded. “Shielded from anyone in orbit over the planet, especially since we don’t have any ships out there at the moment. Smart. If we hadn’t been out here, we wouldn’t have seen it at all.” He turned to Tomas. “Thoughts, Captain?”

Tomas hesitated. Every instinct he had told him to pursue, though it might be futile. If that ship could simply open a wormhole wherever it wanted, then there would be no way to pin it down.

Still…

“I think that ship is a greater threat than the Zolarians, at least in the long run, sir. I think we should pursue.” He pointed at the plot. “If the fight in orbit hasn’t begun yet, then that thing’s in perfect position to try something else. Whoever these aliens are, they seem to be hell-bent on escalating the conflict between us and the Zolarians.” He didn’t need to say that the aliens were far from creating the conflict. That this was a cold war edging toward hot had been obvious for months, even before the Zolarian arms trafficking operation had been uncovered.

Fox nodded again. “I agree. How fast can we get back?” Fox was a ground commander first and foremost, and while he’d needed to learn a great deal about space combat once he’d been promoted to commander, he still deferred to his lifetime spacers.

“It will take quite a while, sir.” Tomas shook his head. “It’s going to be hours before we can even come to a relative halt from this boost.”

Fox moved over to the spare acceleration couch off to Tomas’s left and started to strap himself in. “We’d better get started, then.”

CHAPTER 37

The surface of the “ramp” was strange. It seemed glassy smooth, but Bannon’s boot gripped it easily. As he climbed up into the alien craft, which was about the size of a heavy drop shuttle, the darkness enveloped him, and yet his helmet’s night vision didn’t automatically take over. Even stranger, he realized that he could see reasonably well anyway.

A faint, sourceless glow lit up the interior, so subtle that it was hard to notice at first. It made him feel as if he was groping in the dark even though he was perfectly capable of identifying and engaging targets. The light had clearly been designed for eyes adapted to very different conditions than human eyes.

He’d also expected the craft to look like the inside of a drop shuttle—a large cargo bay with compartments above and forward. Instead he found himself facing a narrow corridor that got dark and impenetrable not far in, lined by oval portals on either side. It was almost as if the entire craft was a honeycomb of smaller compartments.

He didn’t dare glance back to make sure that Hern and the rest of the squad were with him. He held his gaze on the opening ahead, his muzzle pointed at it, until he saw Hern’s muzzle, with his grenade launcher mounted beneath it, come into his field of view off of his shoulder.

With his Third Squad leader at his elbow, Bannon began to push into the passageway.

It felt smaller and narrower than it really was. It felt confining, restricting, and the weird glow was deceptive, making it look like there were more places for an ambushing enemy to hide than there probably were. Openings were spaced unevenly on either side of the corridor. They appeared to be open at first glance, until Bannon realized that there was something like a dark membrane across each one.

He covered the nearest one, pointing Hern at the opening almost directly across from it. Hern shifted to get closer to the bulkhead, where he could cover as much of that membrane-cloaked opening and the passage beyond as he could.

Bannon tried to find a way through the membrane. Pressing his muzzle against it didn’t do anything, though it gave somewhat under the pressure. He didn’t seem to be able to sweep it aside like a curtain. It was probably some sort of mechanical construct, with an activation plate or code somewhere.

He looked forward down the corridor, but nothing seemed to be moving, so he let his rifle hang on its sling and drew his monomolecular combat knife. There was no guarantee that it would cut the stuff—it might even shatter the blade if he hit it wrong—but it was worth a try.

And in fact, the first slash did open the membrane. Instantly the whole thing snapped into the frame, opening the compartment in a split second.

Standing before him, facing away, was another alien.

The alien spun around and stared at Bannon for a heartbeat before it grabbed for its strange, sleek beam weapon. Bannon and Hern both shot the creature before it could bring the weapon to bear, splashing blue fluids across an oblong table scattered with tools and crumpling the being to the floor.

A high, thin, screeching sounded all around them. That could only be an alarm. A membrane snapped across the opening at the ramp, and suddenly everything seemed to sway—as if the craft had just lifted off. He looked back down the corridor the way they had come. There was some visibility through the membrane, and it confirmed that they were, indeed, off the ground and climbing fast.

That’s not good.

Bannon looked around to find that only Hern, Lewiski, and Alexius had made it aboard with him.

“On me.”

He turned toward the front of the alien craft. They had one chance to survive this now, and that was to take control of the vessel.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be any thunder run on the cockpit, or whatever the craft’s analog for it was. Two more of the spindly, round-headed aliens popped out of openings farther forward, pointing stubby, rounded weapons that looked different from the beam weapons they’d been using outside.

Hern, fortunately, had been keeping his eyes open, and he shot the one on the right in the head as soon as it appeared. The alien was wearing a helmet, but the bullet smashed through the visor and bounced the creature’s head off the edge of the portal before it tumbled to the floor. The second alien ducked back out of the corridor as its fellow was killed, and Bannon drove forward, all too aware that there were more openings that he was going to have to cross without giving up his cover on the known threat directly ahead. Fortunately, Lewiski was right behind him, and as Bannon and Hern paced up the corridor, Lewiski and Alexius covered their backs.

For a moment, despite the danger, Bannon found himself thinking back to the old days. When he’d been Sergeant Bannon, with Corporal Hern covering his back, as they’d pushed their way into terrorist or raider strongholds, either human or alien, across a dozen different worlds and space stations. Life had been simpler, then. Before Ka-Tos. Before the fight that had eviscerated Third Phalanx and put him in command.

It was that simple again now. Kill or be killed. Capture the craft or disappear.

They closed in on the paired openings. The dead alien was still lying across the threshold of the first, but the membrane had closed across the other. That meant they were going to have to cut through it and expose themselves to the other alien, which would be waiting with that bulbous weapon pointed right at them.

That was why they had grenades.

Under different circumstances, Bannon might have hesitated to use grenades aboard a spacecraft in flight. But if they didn’t clean this craft out, they were dead anyway.

Halting just short of the membrane-covered opening, Bannon shifted his aim to check the open chamber beyond the dead alien on the other side. There were several pieces of unidentifiable equipment within, with another opening leading up and forward. That would explain why the corridor ended just ahead in what looked like a blank bulkhead instead of a passage up to the cockpit.

He hadn’t sheathed his knife but had just clamped it against the rifle’s forearm as he’d shot the alien in the first compartment. Now he lifted his muzzle, balancing the weapon with his firing hand, and cut the next membrane.

It snapped away, and Lewiski lobbed an omnibanger into the compartment. It went off with its usual flash, thunderous noise, and burst of conductive, disruptive mist. Bannon had already sheathed the knife as the omnibanger had sailed past him, and now he flowed in.

They had to still be in the atmosphere, since “down” was still toward the deck. When they got high enough that the heavy thrust kicked in, the walls were going to become the floors, and this was going to get that much harder.

Unless of course the aliens were so advanced that they could manipulate gravity to the point that they didn’t need to worry about that. But Bannon doubted that. He had already noted something like rungs built into the deck.

The compartment, as best he could tell using his helmet’s sensors to see through the mist, was empty. There was more of the unfamiliar machinery and equipment here, and three seats built for the spindly-limbed aliens, but no aliens themselves. The one who had darted in here must have vanished through the second opening, leading forward—unless it was able to make itself invisible in the obscurant mist.

At this point, Bannon wasn’t going to discount any possibility.

He moved across the compartment to the membrane set into the forward bulkhead, careful to keep out of the area directly in front of it. Putting his back to the bulkhead, he reached for his knife.

At that point the drives kicked in hard. The nose went up, and Bannon and Lewiski were thrown across the compartment. They slammed into the equipment at the aft bulkhead while the craft began to climb sharply into the sky.

CHAPTER 38

Draven, suddenly thinking back to the air raid on the support base where they’d lost nearly half the company, began to engage the oncoming otuchan aircraft. He caught the first one with at least two pulses out of the four, one leaving a long, glowing gouge along its fuselage, the other exploding the cockpit. The jet dipped and dove straight toward the ground, striking a couple of kilometers away from the western fence.

By then he had already swung the defense tower toward the next jet, which was alarmingly close by the time he was able to get it centered in the targeting reticle. Three pulses struck it with brilliant green flashes, blowing through the engine pod and sending it tumbling from the sky.

Then he was grabbed, abruptly dragged away from the defense tower, and thrown to the ground, just before the world erupted in smoke and fire.

The shock waves washed over him, and he felt the hammer blows of rocks and debris raining down on his hardsuit, as well as the weight of whoever had tackled him. The jets howled overhead, more rockets and heavy autogun projectiles hammering the ground and the buildings as they went.

As soon as the bombardment slackened, Draven got out from under the man who had knocked him over and looked for where the jets were going to hit next. Fountains of dirt, rocks, and smoke were still settling out of the sky as the glittering specks of the attack aircraft split, banking to north and south to come around at the installation again.

Then he saw the destruction near at hand. At least one of the otuchan aircraft had scored a direct hit on the defense tower. Half of it had been sheared off, and it was now topped with a tangled, torn, and smoking crown of wreckage. It had been Captain Sotero who had thrown him clear—and who still lay on the ground. A scar on the side of his backplate told Draven that the captain had taken a hard hit after he’d tackled him.

Draven grabbed Sotero by the arm and heaved him to his feet, throwing that arm over his shoulder and dragging the captain toward the nearest bunker. They were out in the open, those jets were coming back, and there was no longer any defense tower to shoot back at them with.

He staggered under Sotero’s weight. The hit must have dazed the captain. He was alive, he was trying to help, but he stumbled and started to drag Draven down. Gritting his teeth, Draven straightened and forged toward the bunker.

Two of Al Tabaq’s soldiers were at the entryway, trying to track the aircraft with their rifles. “Get the combat lasers up!” Draven barked. They might have lost a bunch of their blowers, but at least they had the crew-served weapons still, even if they’d needed to requisition a few replacements. Crew-served combat lasers were far easier to replace than IFVs.

The jets came howling back, and Draven stopped for a second, threw Sotero over his shoulders, feeling his back crack as he did so, and sprinted for cover. Heavy autogun rounds followed him, kicking up dust and debris as they thudded into the ground behind and around him.

Just before he threw himself and the captain into the bunker, he thought he saw a large, dark craft take off from the other side of the southern ridge. Then he was on his knees, driven to the floor by the captain’s weight. Rolling to his back, he grabbed the comm console in the center of the bunker and hauled himself back to his feet. “Get everyone to cover and be prepared to engage a ground attack.”

“Ground attack, First Sergeant?”

Draven didn’t recognize the kid by the door. He must be one of the replacements. There hadn’t been enough time to get to know all the new kids. Or maybe he was one of Dehaan’s people. Draven wasn’t sure, and right then, he didn’t really care.

“There’s no way the otuchans would launch an airstrike like this without having a ground offensive in the works. They’re not dumb. They have to know what kind of response an all-out attack like this will bring. They wouldn’t commit like this unless they were confident they could take full advantage of the fact that the offworlders are all at each other’s throats.”

“The first sergeant’s right. Do what he says.” The captain’s voice was a croak. He looked up at Draven. “Thanks, First Sergeant.”

“I guess we’re even, sir.” Draven would probably be a headless corpse out in the open yard if the captain hadn’t thrown himself out there to get him out. Captain Sotero was proving to have some depth to him that Draven had to admit he had not expected.

He moved to the entrance and peered out. The airstrikes seemed to be mostly over, though a couple of the otuchan aircraft were still circling. That told him that things were about to get hot on the ground. The otuchans wouldn’t cease fire unless they were concerned with hitting their own people. Then again, given their professed dedication to the philosophy of survival of the fittest, he wondered just how concerned they might be in that regard. Perhaps they had simply expended all their munitions already.

“I’m going back up to that bunker by the landing pads.” The landing platforms were the highest part of the embarkation facility, and if he remembered the lay of the land right, he should be able to get a better view of the approaches, such as they were.

“I’ll come with you.” Sotero straightened up and looked around. “I’m not sure where my weapon went.”

“Don’t worry, sir.” Draven kept his voice low as he led the way out of the bunker. “There will probably be some lying around soon, if we can’t get another one before all hell breaks loose.”

***

The speculation that the otuchan fliers had largely run out of munitions looked like it was accurate. Draven and the captain took some fire as they ran across the open ground toward the landing pads and the higher bunkers—two of the jets dipping down out of the sky to make strafing runs, punching more craters in the already pockmarked and debris-strewn dirt—but that was the end of it. After that the planes climbed back to circle overhead like scavenging avians, watching and no doubt reporting every move they saw to the oncoming horde.

Because there was an oncoming ground force. Now that he was up higher, Draven could see its approach, though he had to infer the force’s size by the extent of the gray dust cloud billowing up from beneath crawler wheels and treads. At the very least, they were looking at something close to three full phratries’ military forces. He still hadn’t worked out what fraction of the otuchan population was devoted to warfare, but he had started to suspect that it wasn’t that simple. For a people so married to the idea of survival and evolution through struggle, it seemed more likely that they all had some martial training and equipment. That meant there were a lot of otuchan killers out there.

That was something he didn’t think that Command had ever really figured out.

Command’s understanding or lack thereof wasn’t his problem at the moment though, except insofar as it got him or denied him support. As he pulled out his magnifiers and scanned the ragged line of crawlers, he felt a chill go up his spine.

If Command was so preoccupied with neutralizing the Corvanite positions along the DMZ that they couldn’t send artillery, gunship, or starfighter support, then this was going to be a very short fight.

CHAPTER 39

Bannon picked himself up off the deck. The craft was in a steep climb. It hadn’t gone completely vertical, but he was now looking up a steep slope at the opening where the alien had disappeared.

That explained the rungs on the deck. The aliens had planned for the possible necessity of moving around the craft under acceleration. It was an odd design decision, but Bannon had seen some strange decisions made by alien and human engineers over the years.

In any case, it gave them a way up, even though fighting up a glorified ladder was not going to be fun.

He checked the others. Lewiski was picking himself up, but he looked like he’d hit pretty hard. Bannon wouldn’t be surprised if the man was covering for a broken rib. They weren’t wearing hardsuits, which Bannon very much regretted. This had gone entirely sideways, and if the hull was breached at any time, they were in trouble. Hern was up too, and Alexius had somehow managed to hit the bulkhead—which was now the deck—with his boots. They all wore groundside combat boots, not mag boots, but it didn’t feel like the deck was any kind of ferrous metal, anyway. Alexius was already covering the opening they’d used to enter the compartment.

Satisfied that his team, such as it was, was up and ready, Bannon started up the rungs, his rifle in one hand. The acceleration felt higher than one G, and it seemed like it was increasing. It was going to be one hell of a climb.

The membrane over the exit was still closed. He couldn’t see through it to tell if there were any aliens waiting on the other side, and the rungs weren’t placed so that he could offset himself from the opening. Death comes. Let us go and meet it.

He leaned into the rungs of the “ladder,” kept his rifle pointed at the membrane—pressing it in slightly as the material gave a little under the pressure—and drew his knife.

A small cut, and the membrane snapped open. Bannon braced his rifle’s buttstock under his arm, hoping he could point shoot any of the aliens before they blew his head off. For all he knew, they were unaffected by acceleration or spatial disorientation and might be clinging to the walls like arachnors, pointing those bulbous weapons at the opening. But the passage above him was empty. More rungs were set into the deck, and that resulting “ladder” was about as close to completely vertical as it could get without the ship climbing straight up, at which point it would become an overhang.

If the aliens really wanted to stop the Corvanites’ advance, all they’d have to do was put the ship on its tail and hit the drives. The climb was going to be tough enough as it was, at what felt like close to two Gs.

“Clear.” Bannon put the knife back in its sheath, moving more slowly than he would have liked just to make sure he didn’t stab himself in the leg, acutely conscious of how exposed he was up here.

Hern was at the base of the ladder below him, with Lewiski and Alexius covering their backs. “With you, sir.”

Bannon looked up at the rungs above him, grimaced, and slung his rifle. If the aliens popped out and attacked, he was going to be in trouble, but trying to climb that one-handed was going to be next to impossible, especially as the Gs continued to mount. Corvanites trained hard, and even at his age, with the accumulation of injuries and scars that he’d collected over his career, Bannon was physically a match for most mainline humans. But every man has his limits, and a combat leader, especially, has to know them. There’s overcoming limits, and then there’s being stupid. The Corvanite ethos of pushing through pain, discomfort, and the threat of imminent death was still focused on victory, and stupidity was not encouraged.

Cinching down the sling with the rifle under his arm, he continued his climb.

The acceleration was getting more intense, and he dragged himself upward with increasing difficulty. He could hear Hern grunting behind him as he did the same. His old assistant was not going to let him get to the top of that ladder alone.

There was another membrane at the top. Whether they were in place as stopgaps in case the ship decompressed, or as actual defenses, they were slowing the Corvanites down. Especially since there was no way to tell what was on the other side.

Bannon hung by one hand as he repeated the breaching procedure. It was a good thing the doors were covered by these membranes instead of actual doors, because if they’d had to cut their way through solid doors, they would never have gotten this far. The membrane snapped open, and this time he met resistance. A flash went past his head, scorching a pit in the overhead that was now the bulkhead behind him.

The aliens were waiting.

Jamming his knife between the rung and the wall, Bannon dug in his gear for a grenade. Hern hiked himself a little higher, almost wrapping himself around Bannon’s boots, and held up an omnibanger. “Here, sir.”

Bannon leaned down to grab it, then gritted his teeth as he hauled himself back up. No more shots had come through the opening above his head. The aliens were probably hoping that even if they hadn’t hit him, they’d dissuaded him from continuing toward the command deck.

Fortunately, the new omnibangers had been designed so that a soldier could activate them with one hand. The old ones would have required him to use both hands, which would have been impossible on this ladder, under what was starting to feel like three Gs.

The alien pilot was seemingly hell-bent on getting off this planet.

Triggering the fuse, Bannon lobbed the omnibanger into the passageway above him, giving it more force than he would have normally, especially since it seemed to weigh almost five pounds. He hoped he’d set it for a short enough fuse.

The detonation was amplified as the shock wave was funneled through the passageway, slamming through the opening above him and making his head hurt despite his helmet. He took the split second between letting go of the omnibanger and its explosion to reach down, free his rifle, and drag it up to his shoulder, heaving himself up with one hand to lay the weapon over the lip of the opening.

The deck opened up on the other side of the portal, though there was another membrane across the opening that led forward, hopefully toward the cockpit. Three rows of strangely shaped acceleration couches were arranged in the middle of the compartment, with more equipment or consoles lining the outer bulkheads and clustered aft, where two more membranes covered other openings aft. The shell of the omnibanger had fallen forward of where Bannon now clung, yet even the fog was sliding aft, its weird, engineered “clinginess” unable to counteract the acceleration.

Three aliens were strapped into the acceleration couches, and one of them had pivoted its seat around so that it was now effectively hanging from its harness, pointing its weapon at the opening. Unfortunately for the alien it was aiming a little too high, perhaps expecting Bannon to try to make a full entry into the compartment before he engaged. Bannon leaned into his weapon just enough to lift the muzzle toward his foe, forced himself not to flinch as another blinding flash punched through the air above him, and walked three shots up the alien’s rounded torso.

The alien spasmed in its seat before slumping against its harness, blue fluid dripping toward the aft bulkhead. Its weapon fell from its grip, struck the deck, and slid toward Bannon.

Bannon shifted his aim and dumped most of the rest of the magazine at the other aliens in their acceleration couches. Only one of the two seemed to be armed, and he concentrated on that one first, his final round punching through its skull just as it triggered a blast from its weapon that blew an unoccupied couch apart.

Bannon dragged himself forward. There were more rungs set into the deck here, but they didn’t lead him where he wanted to go, so he had to reach for one of the acceleration couches as he braced a boot against the lip of the opening. Hern was right behind him, and essentially rolled out of the opening and fell against the aft bulkhead.

Bannon looked up at the forward membrane, which he hoped was the opening to the cockpit. The slope leading to it was pretty steep at this thrust, but he dragged himself up onto the nearest couch, keeping his weapon pointed toward the membrane. Lewiski and Alexius climbed in behind, spreading out to cover the rest of the compartment as best they could. Hern had to throw himself across the doorway and almost lost his balance on the edge, but Lewiski reached out and grabbed his squad sergeant’s arm, dragging him over and steadying him before he fell.

Bannon was already hauling himself to the next acceleration couch and planning the rest of his climb. The move from the farthest forward couch to the entry to the membrane was going to be the tricky part; the distance was too great for him to brace himself against the seat and reach the membrane. But he figured that if a knife could open one of those membranes, perhaps a bullet would do just as well. If that worked, possibly one of the junior soldiers could then help boost him through.

Before he got halfway there, though, everything, inside and out, seemed to twist, and the whole universe went black.

CHAPTER 40

“What do you think, First Sergeant?” Sotero was looking at the same terrain and the same mass of otuchans and otuchan vehicles that Draven was, but while not quite going so far as to ask his ostensible subordinate what to do, he was asking for his advice.

“We still have a little time,” Draven said. Those crawlers might be agile—more agile on rough terrain than Zolarian blowers, by far—but there were quite a few rocky defiles between the open ground where they were currently kicking up dust and the plateau where the staging area had been set. “They can’t come at us along the entire front, and they’ve got some rough ground to get over before they can get within range.” He peered through his magnifiers again. “Looks like they’ve got some rocket artillery with them, which could be a problem.”

Sotero nodded. “If we can set up on the chokepoints where they’re most likely to come at us, we can mass what firepower we have. Combat lasers, at least.”

“If the strike force left any other heavy weapons here, we could certainly use them.”

“Good point, First Sergeant.” Sotero turned to the nearest of the support personnel. At least, Draven assumed it was one of the staging area’s people. “Where’s Lieutenant Dehaan?”

“I don’t know, sir.” The kid looked around as if he was lost.

“Well, find her.” Sotero could put some serious weight into his voice. “Or at least find me someone with rank and some idea of what is here and what isn’t.”

The kid scurried off, and Sotero looked around. “I don’t suppose we have comms with the strike force, do we? Could we recall them?”

“What are the odds they’re going to respond to a recall from us?” Draven replied, keeping his voice low. “It would have to go through Region Command, at least.”

Sotero wasn’t deterred. “If this place gets taken, they’ll be cut off, presuming the Corvanites don’t decimate them.” He turned toward the nearest bunker. “Sergeant Lapierre!”

Draven shrugged faintly. It was the captain’s job, after all, to set the mission and deal with higher. He started toward the wall to do his own job. “Sergeant Al Tabaq! Sergeant Ferrier!”

***

The growl of the otuchan crawlers was getting louder, and Draven imagined he could almost hear the rocks and vegetation crunching under their rough tires. They still didn’t have visual contact, but they were getting close.

He looked around. The small strike force was mostly made up of the survivors of Sergeant Al Tabaq’s First Platoon. Lieutenant Hector was hovering near Al Tabaq’s elbow, eager to do his part, but clearly nervous. The losses the company had taken had seriously rattled several of the junior officers, and a couple of them were now what Draven would consider out-and-out liabilities in combat. Draven had been around enough that he could see it. It made Sotero’s newfound assurance and steadiness that much more admirable.

The last hour, with the otuchans drawing steadily closer, had been busy. Draven had put Ferrier to work deterring the otuchan aircraft, which had taken several of their combat lasers out of play for the ambush. They hadn’t succeeded in shooting down any of the four jets that had been circling the staging area, but they’d done just enough damage to drive them to greater range, hopefully putting them too high and too far away to be able to report on what First and Third Platoons were doing. Meanwhile a lot of work had been put into dislodging rocks to further narrow the defile that formed the most likely approach to the wall—or more accurately, the fence. The fence was more of a dividing line than a fortification, and even one of the smaller, three-wheeled vehicles would push through it fairly easily. Which was part of why this group was out in the rocks and the terrain outside.

They hadn’t managed to scrape together the heavy weapons that the captain had been hoping for—they’d found some missile reloads without launchers, and a few crates of combat drones, but not enough. So the bulk of their striking firepower was in the four crew-served combat lasers that Draven and Al Tabaq had gotten set up behind ramparts of rock, arranged as best they could to look somewhat natural.

Draven and Captain Sotero had also discussed how to deploy their limited number of combat drones. Sotero had wanted to deploy them in the initial ambush, hoping to knock out as many crawlers as possible at the outset, to deter the otuchans from pressing the attack. Draven had seen the logic—he’d seen the otuchans draw back when faced with overwhelming firepower before—but he suspected that this assault would be different from the hit-and-run attacks that had characterized the otuchan war against the humans thus far. This was an offensive on a scale that hadn’t been seen since the first attacks on the local Zhogalganite settlements on the shores of the Dauyl Tenizi. Settlements that no longer existed.

As a result, Draven wanted to keep something back in case this needed to be turned into a defense in depth.

They still had a few picket drones up, though he didn’t have direct control of them. That would have necessitated having his face buried in a data plate or giving up his own visibility by projecting the feed onto his visor. He’d left the feeds to the captain, and was relying on reports over comms.

“Watch out, First Sergeant.” Sotero was being professional, but he hadn’t done a good job of pretending that he wasn’t chafing at being in the bunker, directing things via comms, instead of out on the front line, distinguishing himself. The events of the last couple hundred hours had sobered him, but he’d come to Zhogalgan as a bit of a medal-chaser, and there was no fixing that overnight. “The otuchans have infantry support moving alongside the vehicles. They’re mostly up in the higher ground, in the rocks. That’s why you haven’t seen them yet.”

Draven acknowledged. He had been expecting contact almost thirty minutes before. If the crawlers were moving slowly to allow the infantry to keep up, that would explain the delay.

It also made the next few minutes infinitely more dangerous. He’d hoped to catch the crawlers in the chokepoint, blast them, and fall back. If they had infantry support, this could get ugly fast.

The first crawler came into view, and thanks to the captain’s warning, Draven scanned the higher ground up to the north. Sure enough, there were hunched, crocodilian figures moving from rock to rock, their boxy rifles—more of the altered human weapons must have been delivered than he’d thought—in their clawed hands. They were ready for trouble.

Draven moved over to Al Tabaq’s position. “Give me two fireteams. We need to get the flank security up higher before we open fire.”

Al Tabaq turned. “Dorf. Samuels. Take your teams and go with First Sergeant.”

Draven identified his teams. They were a mix of old hands and the new replacements. That was a good call on Al Tabaq’s part. Akiwe had divided up his replacements from the rest of his platoon, and the cracks were already showing there, even before they’d entered combat.

“With me.” He turned and headed up onto the hillside, past the partly artificial slide that they’d deepened for cover for the lasers.

It didn’t take too long to be reminded that the younger soldiers were, in fact, younger. The weight of Draven’s hardsuit dragged at him as he scrambled up the hill, and Dorf and half his team were out in front of him within a couple dozen meters.

Dorf was a professional. The only reason the man was a corporal instead of a Sergeant Second or First Class was his tendency to get a little too blunt with officers. He moved quickly to cover and just as quickly dispersed his team among the rocks and the ball-shaped, prickly, blue-gray shrubs.

Samuels was dragging a bit, and Draven looked back and stared at him until he started to get his own team situated.

Not a moment too soon. Draven had barely taken a knee behind a rock when the first of the otuchan infantry appeared ahead, moving cautiously along the military crest of the high ground.

The otuchans were wearing crude body armor, front and back plates strapped underneath their load-bearing equipment. It was effective, protecting their vitals from all but the heaviest strikes, even if it looked primitive compared to Zolarian hardsuits. None of them were wearing helmets though. Their blunt, leathery faces were exposed, but it kept their senses uninhibited.

They were moving quickly but carefully, dodging from cover to cover as they got closer to the staging area. Draven noted after a few moments that they were keeping that cover between them and the fence—and the towers set irregularly around the inside of that fence, where the support personnel were set up with rifles and a few autoguns.

Yet the combat lasers were down in the defile below. There, and at the second chokepoint, farther north.

“Hold what you’ve got.” They had a good shot on the first otuchans, but he wanted at least one of those crawlers in the kill zone before anybody opened fire.

The crawler below was one of the smaller, three-wheeled ones, with a heavy cannon mounted in the turret. Some of the otuchan vehicles actually had remote turrets—diaspora otuchan tech only appeared as crude as it was because each colony effectively started at zero and rebuilt from the ground up—but this one was semi-open, with a brownish otuchan gunner crouched at the cannon’s side.

From where he knelt, Draven could have shot the gunner in the head. But he left the crawler to the laser gunners and turned his attention to the oncoming infantry.

He felt the tension rising as the next crawler, a much larger five-wheeler, appeared behind the lead vehicle. The flankers were getting closer, and he could see movement on the opposite hill, about three hundred meters away. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to trigger the ambush, but he had to trust Al Tabaq.

Even if he was just trusting his senior platoon sergeant not to let Lieutenant Hector screw it up.

The front of the three-wheeled crawler flared a brilliant, blinding green and exploded with a deafening crack that echoed across the hills. The gunner beside the cannon was blown in half as the cannon’s magazine exploded, and his smoldering torso was thrown clear of the stricken vehicle.

The otuchans on foot reacted immediately, bounding from rock to rock across the hillside, though they had already started to shift to the Zolarians’ right flank, trying to put the bulk of the hill between them and the source of the laser fire. Draven popped his shoulder and part of his helmet up over his rock, the contacts in his gauntlet feeding the rifle sights’ view in the form of a targeting pip on his visor, and knocked the closest otuchan off its feet with a burst of four-millimeter high-velocity rounds.

That was the signal.

The fireteams that had joined him opened fire immediately, raking the hillside with bullets and cutting down a dozen otuchan infantry almost immediately. They had a better angle on their adversaries than the otuchans had been expecting, and several of the saurian aliens fell twitching in the first couple of seconds. If any of the Zolarians had been hoping to catch the otuchans so completely by surprise that they froze, however, they hadn’t been counting on the sheer amount of time that the otuchans had been fighting the humans, and the corresponding lessons learned.

The otuchans behind the vanguard, which was now dead or dying on the hillside, quickly dropped flat or slithered behind cover, and after a few moments, the first probing rifle shots began to smack fragments of rock and fountains of dirt into the Zolarians’ faces. Their hardsuits were painted in drab colors to blend in, unlike some of the security force hardsuits back in the core worlds near Zolah, but they were still hardsuits, and they didn’t look like rocks or dirt.

One of the newer kids crashed backward onto the ground, her faceplate a gaping, shattered hole in her helmet.

The first of the grenades followed.

The otuchans eschewed automatic weapons, generally speaking, preferring to strike from ambush and get first-round hits with their large-caliber rifles. For larger groups and assault coverage, they opted for rockets or grenades. So when the first grenade slammed into the ground just in front of Draven’s cover, exploding with a thud that rattled his teeth and showered him with dirt, he knew they were in trouble.

“Get that autogun up!” Dorf was bellowing as he emptied a magazine up the hill. Draven kept his head mostly down, lifting it just enough to see around the boulder that was his cover, bracing his weapon against the top of the rock and shifting it, grinding the metal and synthetic against the stone, to put his aiming pip on the first oncoming otuchan.

The otuchans were bipedal, but their legs and arms were of similar lengths, allowing them to move quadrupedally when they wanted to. Four of them were scurrying forward now, weapons slung under their bellies, as three more grenades rained down on the Zolarian line, halting only when Dorf’s autogunner opened up with a long burst that had to have used up half the drum, cutting one of the otuchans almost in half and driving the others into cover.

Then the five-wheeled crawler down in the defile below pivoted its twinned rocket launcher and cannon toward their positions.

This was, indeed, getting ugly.

CHAPTER 41

Bannon blinked. Everything ached, and he felt sick. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.

Then the weightlessness hit him. He was still almost touching the acceleration couch, but it wasn’t meant for a human shape.

It all came flooding back. He snapped his eyes wide open, looking around and grabbing for his rifle, thankful to find that it was still slung to him. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds. The compartment looked almost exactly the same. It was the zero G that had been the most disorienting.

“Everybody alive?” he said.

“I’m up.” Hern was obviously stifling a groan. “What in the rings of Hades was that?”

“I think we just went through a wormhole transition without prep.”

Passing through a wormhole, technically outside of normal spacetime, was something that wasn’t hazarded on a whim. It could have severe debilitating effects. That was why there were usually meds to be taken beforehand, though it was sometimes enough to simply be strapped into an acceleration couch with special goggles that helped filter out the worst of the optical disruption that came from the laws of physics not applying for a few seconds.

They’d had none of that.

“That’s impossible. Even at three Gs, it would have taken days to get to the wormhole emergence point.” Lewiski sounded as foggy and sick as Bannon felt.

Bannon was about to point out that it apparently wasn’t impossible when the membrane just ahead of him snapped open and four of the aliens poured out.

They didn’t come shooting, though two of them were armed. Bannon was glad that he was still offline from the center of the opening, and he snapped his rifle up, unconsciously centering the buttstock on his chest and flipping the sight higher, to the hardsuit setting. He fired as soon as the dot crossed the nearest armed alien’s body, the recoil of the shot pushing him back against the acceleration couch.

Blue blood sprayed out of the alien’s back, and it screamed, a surprisingly throaty sound, though with a strange, electronic reverberation in it. Bannon had to twist to keep the sights on the alien as he bounced off the strangely shaped acceleration couch behind him, and he shot it twice more until it went limp, spinning away from the impacts and bouncing off the bulkhead, losing its grip on its weapon, which went spinning off toward the outer hull.

The second armed alien tried to pivot in midair to return fire, but Alexius had braced himself against the aft bulkhead and promptly blew its head off with a double tap.

The other two aliens seemed to panic. One of them, which was carrying a case of some sort, tried to grab for the nearest acceleration couch, as if trying to get underneath it. Bannon arrested his spin—his rifle hadn’t been quite centered enough—and shot that one through the couch, riding the trigger until the alien’s body drifted backward, propelled by the bullets’ impacts. The last one kept its head better, flipping around in midair and kicking off the acceleration couch to propel itself back the way it had come.

Hern was already moving, diving after it to get through before it could close the membrane behind it. He didn’t quite make it in time, and the membrane snapped shut. Hern simply shot it, and it retracted once more just as quickly.

Bannon followed, shoving off the acceleration couch and diving through the opening. He’d expected the opening to lead directly into the cockpit, but instead they were in yet another chamber with more unidentifiable consoles and equipment lined against the outer hull. The alien was practically swimming up the compartment, bouncing from console to console—if that was even what they were—and heading for another membrane at the opposite end.

It wasn’t moving fast enough to dodge bullets. Hern shot it three times, sending it tumbling through the air, fountaining ribbons of blue blood as it went. His last shot missed as the creature bounced off a piece of equipment, and the bullet struck the membrane at the far end of the compartment. It snapped open, revealing what had to be the control room. Bannon could see a viewport or viewscreen forward, showing the blackness of space.

A bolt of energy flashed down the middle of the compartment, slapping both men with heat and a deafening shock wave. Bannon was sure he’d been shoved partway toward the outer hull, but neither man was going to stay out in the middle of an open space, gravity or no. Unfortunately, with that viewport out front, and the darkness beyond it, Bannon didn’t dare shoot without being very sure that the bullet wasn’t going to overpenetrate. Explosive decompression when they had no hardsuits would be very, very bad.

Corvanites lived to meet death well, but that didn’t include suicide.

Keeping one hand on his rifle, he grabbed one of the consoles and pulled himself along, sending himself skimming along the outer hull toward the opening.

Hern, for his part, decided not to mess around. He grabbed hold of a console, letting his rifle float on its sling, dug his last omnibanger out of its pouch, armed it, and threw it straight through the hatch.

Bannon was at the edge of the opening when the omnibanger detonated, and he ate some of the concussion. Gritting his teeth and drawing his knife, cinching the rifle down, he dove into the conductive fog, hoping this wasn’t the time that his visor let him down.

There were two aliens here, both of them at the controls, one holding a smaller version of the sleek, rounded beam weapons in its six-fingered hand. They were still trying to fly the ship, but it seemed one had sent a shot through the opening just to buy some time.

Bannon went for that one first. Kicking off the doorframe, he wrapped the wiry creature up with one arm around its gun arm and neck, and brought his combat knife down, hard, the point aimed at the juncture between neck and torso. The aliens didn’t really seem to have what could be called “shoulders”; their arms just projected from their thoraxes some distance down from their necks.

The creature twisted and writhed, and its pistol started to come around toward Bannon, the arm far more flexible than it appeared. It was almost as if the alien had grown another elbow. Bannon drove the knife in, plunging the point through the juncture between neck and thorax, and the alien stiffened, blue blood spraying out of the wound. Not one to take chances, Bannon twisted the blade, practically decapitating the alien before he disentangled himself. More of the blue fluid jetted across the console, and the alien went limp, the beam pistol floating away from its hand.

Hern had caught up and was choking the last alien out, or at least trying to. Bannon almost told him to stop wasting time, but then the alien went limp. Whether it was unconscious or dead, he couldn’t tell.

It became less important when he looked up at the viewport.

They had to have gone through a wormhole. There wasn’t any other explanation that Bannon could think of for why they were currently just above the dark side of a barren, airless moon, approaching a large, dark, oblong ship that seemed to be patterned much like the smaller craft they were currently aboard.

CHAPTER 42

Tomas drummed his fingers on the armrest of his command chair. He felt Commander Fox watching him and forced himself to stop.

It had been hours at two and a half Gs. If they were going to try to enter orbit over the outer moon, they’d be hitting turnover soon, but they didn’t want to enter orbit without knowing what they were getting into. There had been no more flashes of Cherenkov radiation, so they thought the unknown craft hadn’t entered a wormhole again, but Tomas didn’t want to put his ship at a velocity disadvantage.

The plan was to make a high-velocity pass, well above the moon’s escape velocity, and see what happened.

Commander Fox was somewhat ambivalent about the plan. As a Corvanite soldier for the better part of a third of a century, he was predisposed to get in and get the fight done. Tomas was the spacer, though, and after the brief fight with that ship, he was going to be cautious. Fortunately, Fox was wise enough to trust the spacer with space battle tactics.

“We’ll be coming over the limb of the moon to see the projected area where that Cherenkov radiation burst came from in fifteen minutes, sir.” Keel seemed slightly more subdued with Commander Fox on the command deck.

“General Quarters. All hands to battlestations, stand by for combat maneuvers.” Everyone should have been at battlestations already, even if they hadn’t been at General Quarters since the target ship had vanished. No one was going to be eager to move around the ship at two and a half Gs anyway.

Tomas could feel the faint tingle as the particle accelerator cannon primed. The Thunderer wasn’t going to go into this fight unprepared.

“Drives cut in three, two, one…”

The ever-present rumble that had made everyone speak slightly louder to be understood for hours died away, and with it the weight on his chest eased, until he felt the faint queasiness that always came with the transition to freefall.

“Deploy the ready fighters.”

Lightning had taken some losses, and they were out of the rotation after so long in their cockpits anyway. With a series of thumps felt through the hull, the Dragon 27s of Firebolt launched out of their tubes, thrusting away from the starship’s hull perhaps a little harder than was standard. They’d all seen what had happened before, and Tomas suspected that every man aboard the ship was wondering how they were going to be able to take that ship on, head to head.

He switched between the visual feeds, looking at the sunlight glinting on the arrowhead shapes of the Dragon 27 starfighters as they dispersed away from the ship. The limb of the moon was dark, facing away from the sun, but it still eclipsed anything they might be able to see.

“Firebolt Six and Seven. Report when you have line of sight over the limb.” Those two fighters would be just far enough out from the Thunderer’s flank that they might be able to detect something before the starship’s sensors did.

The pilots acknowledged the order, and the formation of starship and starfighters continued to cruise toward the moon.

Commander Fox had brought up his own display, projecting the wider plot of the entire planet and its orbitals all the way out to the moons. As the overall commander, even though he’d turned immediate control over to Captain Lewis, he needed to be aware of everything that was going on.

Tomas had up until now been more concerned with the Thunderer’s immediate situation, but now, having a moment of calm, he brought up the same feed in his own plot.

It wasn’t good.

The Zolarians had shifted to a higher orbit as a formation. That alone wasn’t a threat, but with the Eurasians once again descending to low orbit, where they could move more quickly and cross both the Zolarian and Corvanite orbits, it was turning into a recipe for disaster. The opposing starships and their fighters would now be within easy weapons range of each other for substantial portions of their orbits.

Lewis had not, so far, altered the orbits of the Corvanite ships. Whether he was doing that as a show of confidence or simply because he thought that he was in a better position to engage either task group—without risking one or the other of the opposing ships getting in the way and making things worse—Tomas couldn’t begin to guess. Lewis tended to be an aggressive commander, which made his apparent caution strange.

Commander Fox must have noticed his interest. “The Zolarians could have recognized what’s going on and backed off. Instead, they’re accusing us of attacking a Zolarian logistics vessel.”

Tomas frowned. “Can they identify this so-called ‘logistics vessel’?”

“Of course not.” Fox continued watching the plot. “It’s politics again. They want us out of the system, so they’re going to ignore the weirdness and use it as a lever against us.” He snorted. “They should know better who they’re dealing with.”

Tomas had to agree. The Zolarians seemed to have misconstrued Corvanite restraint for the same sort of political maneuvering that, at least to Corvanite eyes, made up the entirety of Zolarian culture. The Zolarians believed that image mattered as much to the Corvanites as it did to their own officers.

“They’re going to push until we have to start shooting, aren’t they?” Tomas said. No one had started maneuvering yet, but he wondered how long that was going to last.

“So it would seem.”

Tomas turned his gaze back to the moon where they were currently bound. It wouldn’t be long before they came over the horizon, and then they should be able to see where that impossible wormhole had opened up. “And if we do find that… ‘ghost ship’? What then?”

Fox’s tone was cold. “That will depend on the Zolarians. And the Eurasians.”

“Thunderer, this is Firebolt Six. I have sensor contact with what appears to be a starship in geosynchronous orbit over the far side of the moon. Sending the feed now.”

Tomas switched his plot to pick up Firebolt Six’s feed. The arrowhead-shaped fighter didn’t have quite the same power optics that the much larger starship did, but its different angle counted for a lot. The image was slightly blurry, due to distance and magnification, but with some further zoom and enhancement Tomas saw what the starfighter had spotted.

The shape was only visible at first by the fact that it occluded some of the stars beyond it. It was oblong and dark, and without references it could have been the size of a starfighter or three times the length of the Thunderer. It showed no radiators or even drive cones, at least none that were evident in the image from the Dragon 27’s sensors.

Tomas watched it, barely noticing that Commander Fox had brought up the same feed, minimizing the larger plot to where he could keep an eye on it.

“There’s more than one.” Fox was leaning forward, pressing against his harness, peering at the image.

Tomas frowned and looked again. Sure enough, though it was hard to see in the visual feed, there was a smaller vessel, much smaller, approaching the larger starship.

“They have auxiliary ships, too,” he said. “Whoever they are.”

“It makes sense. So do we.” Fox was thinking, his expression pensive, tapping one thumb against his chin. Finally, he looked at Tomas. “I know it’s a long shot, Captain, but if we can disable that ship instead of completely destroying it, we could use the intel.”

Tomas took a deep breath, unwilling to show the commander just how unlikely he thought that was. It was difficult at best with ships whose capabilities and rough layouts they knew. Disabling a completely unknown alien craft, one that had already demonstrated abilities beyond those of every human or alien ship in known space… that was going to be next to impossible.

Destroying it, now that would be more doable. Though Tomas wondered even about that possibility, considering the exchange of fire over Zhogalgan only a few hours ago.

“We’ll do what we can, sir.” It was the best he could promise, and while he saw his superior officer’s brow furrow at that, Fox was experienced enough to realize that it was the best they could do. “We’ll be over the horizon and able to engage within the next thirty minutes.”

CHAPTER 43

Draven threw himself flat, dragging Dorf down with him, if only because the fire team leader was the closest to him. A moment later, the world erupted in fury and noise as the crawler’s cannon opened fire, heavy rounds slamming into the hillside and exploding boulders into clouds of whickering shrapnel. He felt several heavy impacts along his side and was glad for his hardsuit.

The fire slackened, possibly just so that the otuchan gunner could tell whether or not he’d hit anything. Dorf was moving, if feebly, and Draven dragged him down further into cover before lifting his head and taking stock.

Dust and debris were still raining down from the impacts, making it hard to see. At least one of Dorf’s people was down, clearly dead, missing his or her head, a good bit of torso, and one arm. A couple more were sprawled on the ground, though they were moving slightly, so they were still alive at least. Samuels’s team had taken less of a hit, but they were seriously outgunned by that crawler, and the otuchan warriors were still moving forward, visible only as predatory shadows in the dust and smoke.

Heaving himself up to an aching knee, Draven leveled his rifle, thankful that the contacts within his gauntlet were still working as the aiming pip appeared in his faceplate. He shot the closest shape, leaning into the gun, the buttstock hard against the pocket built into his pauldron. It was almost impossible to tell if he was hitting through the murk, so he just continued to fire until the otuchan finally slumped, shuddering to the ground, lying atop its own weapon as it bled out.

Then he had to drop down farther as a heavy bullet snapped past his head. Dorf was up and shooting, though that lasted only a couple of seconds before a near miss from that heavy cannon threw him onto his back in a cloud of black smoke and dust. He rose again, but slowly and painfully.

They were going to have to fall back.

“Captain Sotero, this is First Sergeant Draven. We need those combat drones now.”

Sotero didn’t answer over the comms, but the drones hummed out of the dust, diving with faint, buzzing screams toward the nearest crawlers.

The cannon-armed vehicle that had taken the flankers under fire erupted in flame, jagged chunks of metal flying through the air and slamming into the ground hard enough that one shard was embedded in the dirt only a few meters in front of and above where Draven was crouched. The oncoming fire slackened again, and Draven passed Dorf as he moved up next to Samuels’s team and opened up again on the advancing otuchans, raking their line with barely aimed fire. He was just trying to force them back at that point.

“Al Tabaq, pull those lasers back!” Draven hoped that he’d keyed the comms in time, but a moment later he got an acknowledgment, though it was hard to hear over the thunderous roar of half the hillside blowing up as more combat drones dove on their targets. Then he was pulling back, grabbing another one of Dorf’s soldiers who wasn’t moving quickly enough and dragging her down the hillside.

It took some time to make it the next hundred meters back to their crossing point at the fence. Al Tabaq already had his crews lugging the combat lasers and their power packs back over the wall, and Draven quickly redeployed the security element to the rocks and gullies nearby to cover them. The otuchan advance seemed to have stopped, maybe even pulled back, under the onslaught of combat drones.

They didn’t have many of those left, though. They were going to need support soon.

He just hoped Region Command wasn’t so focused on the Corvanites that they ignored the otuchan attack until it was too late.

The dust was settling on the hills, but the smoke still pouring from destroyed otuchan crawlers was thickening, casting a dark pall over the staging area and the surrounding ridgelines. Draven looked around, counting as he went. He already knew they’d taken some losses. Yet it was even worse than he’d feared. At least ten of the men and women who’d gone out there were still on those rocky, dusty hills.

“First Sergeant! We’re up!” Al Tabaq didn’t bother with the comms, but bellowed through his external speakers.

Draven clapped Dorf on the shoulder. “Get your team moving.”

Dorf, still moving as if he was in some pain, started to usher the remnant of his fire team over the wall. The ladder had been cobbled together quickly, and when he glanced back at it, Draven saw that it was already bending, probably from the weight of the combat lasers. It might not survive getting everyone over.

Movement caught his eye. The crawlers might have stopped, but the foot-mobiles were still coming, at least to scout out the Zolarian positions—the human positions; he realized that Zolarian, Zhogalganite, or Corvanite, none of it mattered to the otuchans—and the first few of them were crouched behind boulders, near the top of the high ground to the west, about where the defile where they’d ambushed the crawlers made its nearest turn. Leveling his rifle, he put the pip on one of the shadowy figures and fired. The bullet spat fragments from the rock, and the blunt, vaguely crocodilian face vanished.

“First Sergeant! Let’s go!” Al Tabaq had just ushered Dorf over the wall. He leveled his own rifle at the shapes in the clouds of dust beyond and stitched rounds across the line of the high ground while Draven turned and sprinted for the ladder.

He got up as fast as he could, even as a few rounds blew holes through the wall. The otuchans were taking cover, but that was their natural way of war, and despite the aches in his limbs and his head, despite the weight of his hardsuit, he scrambled up that ladder as if his life depended on it, because it did. He barely threw himself over the top, tumbling to the dirt as another heavy otuchan rifle round smashed the top of the ladder.

One of Dorf’s soldiers tried to pull up the ladder and took a round to the helmet. If it had been a glancing hit, the helmet would probably have saved the young man’s life, but as it was, he fell limply to the ground, blood leaking from a ragged hole smashed through the helmet’s mandible. The faint dying, choking sounds confirmed that the bullet had torn his throat out. Dorf, as painful as his movement still was, clambered up to the top of the fence and quickly hauled the ladder over, dropping to the ground again as two more of the heavy otuchan bullets smashed the ladder into twisted scrap in his gauntlets.

Another flight of six combat drones went by overhead. Draven glanced up as they winged into the dust and smoke. He didn’t regret telling the captain to turn them loose, but he was pretty sure they were going to be out of the deadly little unmanned aircraft soon, and that meant they’d have nothing but the lasers to counteract the massed otuchan firepower.

He hoped there wasn’t much more out there, but he knew there probably was. This was an offensive, not a raid.

Picking himself up, he looked to Al Tabaq. “Get these people to cover and stand by to mount the next line of defense, Sergeant.”

“Yes, First Sergeant.” Al Tabaq was practically throwing the words over his shoulder as he was already moving his squad toward the defense towers.

Draven looked at the wall. It wasn’t going to slow even one of those five-wheelers. Especially not if they fired on it first. He hoped that the defense in depth that he’d laid out hastily before setting up the ambush was ready.

As he started to jog toward the bunker where Captain Sotero had set up the command center, he heard the distant roar of rocket artillery.

It wasn’t Zolarian.

CHAPTER 44

Bannon knew it was probably a fool’s errand, but he turned to the alien that Hern had choked out. “See if you can wake that one up. If they’ve been trying to manipulate things here, maybe they can understand Anglisch.”

Hern, holding on to the acceleration couch for leverage, lowered himself to reach out to the limp alien. After a moment, he looked up. “I don’t think it’s waking up, sir. Ever.”

Bannon frowned. “They must be more fragile than we thought.”

“Maybe. I didn’t squeeze it that hard.” Hern pulled himself toward the console in front of the acceleration couch. “In fact, I was surprised when it just went limp.”

There wasn’t time to determine what had gone wrong. Maybe they really were that fragile, or maybe the creature had had a suicide pill in its mouth. There was no way to know just by looking at it, and in the meantime, that ship was getting closer and closer.

Bannon levered himself into the uncomfortable acceleration couch and looked over the controls. They seemed to be mostly touch-sensitive screens, but they were in an unfamiliar language. The symbols meant nothing, and the text meant less. He tried tentatively tapping what looked like it might have been attitude controls, but nothing happened.

“Maybe the console’s locked out.” Lewiski had stationed himself at the entrance, watching the aft section. So far as they knew, there might not be any more of the aliens alive on the ship, but caution was necessary. “That’s pretty fast, though.”

“Maybe it’s automatic when they get close enough to the starship.” Hern looked up at the growing dark shape of the mothership outside, blotting out more and more of the stars. “I don’t particularly want to try to clear that ship, sir.”

“I don’t either, but we don’t have many options.” Bannon was watching the same image, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to do next. The plan had been to take the ship, smash anything that looked like it was a comm disruptor, then call for support. But now they were out in space, on an alien spacecraft none of them knew how to fly, without hardsuits.

They might be dead already. This might have turned into a mission to simply sell themselves as dearly as possible.

That was something every Corvanite thought about. It was actively talked about on the agoge field, with examples going back to Thermopylae on Earth. For many of them, it was actively hoped for. There wasn’t a Corvanite alive who didn’t look forward to the kind of death that would go down in history.

Even if no one ever knew. They’d know.

“All right.” Bannon put thoughts of death and glory aside. He still had responsibilities, and these ships had interfered in operations on Zhogalgan and killed Corvanites, Zhogalganites, and Zolarians. He didn’t know what their goals were, and he didn’t care. They were an enemy, so he was going to fight them.

At the same time, while a good death surrounded by dead enemies and with empty magazines, might be a Corvanite ideal, he wasn’t willing to throw these men’s lives away unnecessarily. If there was a way to win this fight, he had to find it.

Even if that seemed to be impossible.

He kept trying to see if anything on the console worked, but either he was completely out of his depth in trying to read the controls, or that starship outside—which was now filling the forward view, a docking bay having irised open like one of the membrane doors aboard the smaller vessel—was in complete control.

He finally gave up. The ship was uncontrollable. “Back down to the hold. Take cover from the opening as best as possible. Once we dock, if they make entry, we fight them off. If they don’t, we’ll push out and try to find a way off.”

That might mean commandeering another ship, but more likely it was going to mean capturing one of the aliens and forcing it to fly them back to the planet. Easier said than done, but in Bannon’s experience, guns were a universal language.

They moved off the command deck, Bannon silently cursing their lack of mag boots, though he couldn’t be sure they’d even work on this decking. They had to launch themselves from contact point to contact point, grabbing hold of acceleration couches, equipment, consoles, whatever provided some purchase for the next leg of their maneuver.

The ship shuddered, confirming that it was under some sort of control. Bannon had been aboard enough spacecraft to recognize thruster firings when he felt them.

It didn’t take long, despite the inconveniences of zero G, to get to the hold. The bodies had been pushed all the way to the aft bulkhead by the acceleration as the ship had pushed out of the atmosphere and then boosted toward the current rendezvous. Blue fluids had spread across the deck and the bulkheads, though it was drying on those surfaces already.

It felt like a long time after they’d braced themselves in cover before a series of clunks reverberated through the hull. They had docked.

Bannon breathed carefully as he leveled his rifle at the membrane over the exit ramp. Death comes.

The membrane snapped open, but only darkness lay on the other side. The aliens didn’t seem to need much in the way of light. Fortunately, the receptors on Bannon’s helmet rendered most of that darkness into shades of gray in front of his eyes, so he saw the first movement as two aliens carefully peered in through the opening, weapons at the ready.

The pilot must have sent word that they were under attack, probably as soon as they’d taken off. Which was why the Corvanites were expecting a welcoming party.

Bannon would have given an eye and a tooth for an omnibanger right about now. The best way he could conceive of taking this problem on was to attack. Toss an omnibanger off the ramp, follow it out, guns blazing, and drive through any defenses in the bay. Unfortunately, they had none left, and even if they had, a part of him knew that wouldn’t be the best course of action. They had no idea how many aliens were out there, or how they might have the ramp covered in a crossfire.

Each of the Corvanites had grabbed one of the alien weapons, though they were going to be difficult to use, as they had been designed for differently shaped hands. They would use any weapon they could find, though.

Death comes. Let us go and meet it.

The two aliens carefully moved up the ramp, crouched behind their weapons. Bannon put his sights on the closest one, steadied his aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The shot blew right through the alien’s faceplate, and it swayed backward, held in place by its mag boots, or whatever equivalent it was using. Hern shot the second one a split second later, as it was taking a step, and that was enough to dislodge it and send it drifting out the aft end of the spacecraft.

There was no immediate response. If the aliens were using comms, they were inside their helmets, where they couldn’t be heard.

Bannon had a sudden thought that made him discard his earlier caution. “On me.” He launched himself out through the opening over the ramp, hoping he could catch himself and take cover before getting shot.

What had occurred to him, as that one alien had gone sailing out into the docking bay beyond, was that all the aliens needed to do to solve their problem, so long as the Corvanites stayed holed up in the smaller ship, was vent the docking bay to space.

So he dove over the ramp, twisting around in midair, aiming for the bulkhead beside the membrane that could open out into the void, centering his rifle as best he could in his chest. As he turned, he saw an alien on a balcony above the docked craft, and as he continued his twist, he stroked the trigger when his sights crossed the spindly figure. The two rounds hit, knocking the alien back and to one side, though its mag boots stayed connected to the deck.

The others hadn’t hesitated to follow. They were Corvanites. More importantly, they were his Corvanites.

All three of them had followed him this far.

Hern and Lewiski were heading for the bulkhead, but Alexius had miscalculated his trajectory a little and was heading for the membrane itself. Bannon shot another alien before it could bring its beam weapon to bear—that one had hesitated, and a distant, detached part of Bannon’s mind wondered if the aliens weren’t just as worried about depressurizing the docking bay—then stretched out a hand and grabbed Alexius’s arm, twisting with his boots against the bulkhead to drive the younger man away from the exit to empty space.

Then he pushed off, heading for that balcony and the two hatches above it.

The only way to survive the next few minutes was going to be to get through those hatches and deep enough into the starship that the aliens didn’t dare depressurize it.

He grabbed the oddly flexible railing and used it to arrest his flight, almost getting slammed into by Alexius, who had followed him closely. Hern and Lewiski were working their way around the other side of the shuttle, or scoutship, or whatever it was they’d boarded, and a couple more gunshots echoed through the chamber, almost drowning out the single crack of a beam weapon.

That sound almost made Bannon flinch. For a split second, he braced for the inevitable decompression as the membrane between the bay and space was breached. But the hurricane as the air in the bay rushed out into the emptiness between the stars didn’t happen. Either the bolt had missed the membrane, or the aliens were a bit more careful about what might activate that particular opening.

One of the nearer membranes on the upper balcony snapped open though, and six more aliens poured through. They were using the same sort of mag boots, and their movement was fast, smooth, and efficient as they pivoted and cleared the opening to cover their corners.

Unfortunately for them, Bannon and Alexius had been ready for them.

Sometimes survival in a close-quarters firefight comes down to reflexes, readiness, and luck. Only the fact that the two Corvanites were already aimed in and fingers tightening on their triggers as the membrane snapped open kept them from getting their heads blown off. Even so, as they shot the first two aliens through the door, a bolt came within inches of Bannon’s head, and his helmet’s visor display fritzed for a brief moment while the heat made his skin prickle.

His own bullets had torn through the alien’s neck and upper torso, and he kept firing, blinking past the static in his visor and thankful that his sights were still functioning.

The two of them raked the assault team with fire, dumping their entire magazines in seconds. Blue fluid splashed against the bulkhead, the deck, and the overhead, and floated out over the bay in weird, wavering droplets. The three that had gone the other direction, to dig that corner, didn’t have the time to turn and engage, as more bullets slammed through their torsos, necks, and heads.

Hern vaulted over the railing, grabbing it almost too late and nearly slamming his boots into the overhead before he got himself under control. The aliens’ corpses were drifting away from the doorway, the cloud of droplets dispersing as it floated out into the docking bay.

As the echoes of the gunfire died down, Bannon thought he heard a whooping sound somewhere deeper into the ship. Probably an alarm. There was no time to waste.

Checking briefly that Alexius hadn’t been hit, Bannon shoved past several alien bodies and plunged through the doorway, kicking off the railing and diving into the passageway. The passage curved slightly, as if following the contours of the ship. Unlike the scoutship, this vessel was apparently built more like the starships he was used to, with the decks stacked atop the drive, providing artificial gravity when under thrust. It wasn’t under acceleration at the moment, and he was grateful for that fact, because it meant they weren’t going anywhere else just yet. If they really had made a wormhole transit, they could already be hundreds of light years away from friendlies.

The passage was empty, and there was something disquieting about it. At first he thought that was due to its curving, slightly oval shape, but the more he looked at it as he propelled himself down the corridor, kicking off from deck, bulkhead, or overhead to keep moving, the more he realized his unease was due to the strange, almost organic texture on every surface. It was slightly grooved, but in a way that sometimes looked artificial, sometimes like it was some sort of growth.

The ship was smaller than he’d thought. He realized in seconds that he’d gone almost halfway around the hull. He tried to arrest his movement and started looking for an elevator or a ladderwell. It looked like they were clear, so far. The aliens were probably regrouping after the disaster in the docking bay.

He was expecting the conveyor to the upper decks to be in the central spine, but as they circled the ship, he didn’t see any openings leading toward the center. They were all on the outside. He finally picked one, managed to arrest his momentum by bracing himself where the passageway narrowed at the top, got out of a direct line on the doorway, and breached the membrane with his knife, snapping his rifle up as he let the blade hover in midair.

There was no ladder or elevator. He’d apparently just breached living quarters. Occupied living quarters.

And the eyes staring at him in shock were human.

The man was short and compact, his features vaguely Eurasian, though there had been enough drift over the long years since the expansion across the stars had begun that it was hard to tell for sure. He was dressed in a strange-looking coverall, he was unarmed, and he had frozen like a frightened swerant.

Bannon levered himself into the room, keeping his weapon trained on the man, and the other three flowed in after him. They were regaining their space legs, recalling the zero-G combat training that they hadn’t needed to use most of the time they’d been in the system. They quickly cleared the room, which was about the size of a closet, and Alexius and Lewiski held security on the door while Bannon and Hern closed in on the man, who had shrunk back onto his bunk, flinching at the weapons pointed at his face.

“Who are you?” There was no guarantee that the man would understand Anglisch, especially since he was on an unidentified alien craft, but it was worth a try.

The man was looking from one to the other of them, and Bannon could see the thoughts flitting back and forth behind his eyes. This man was a survivor, and he was thinking of how to leverage this situation to his advantage, despite the six-millimeter muzzles trained on his face.

Finally, he seemed to relax. “I am known as Ombro. And you are somewhere you shouldn’t be.”

Bannon didn’t have the time or the patience to play word games. “You speak Anglisch, and you know this ship. You’re coming with us.”

A faint, disturbing smile crossed the man’s face. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. Why should I help you?”

Hern grasped the man’s coverall with exaggerated slowness and brought him close, letting his rifle hang on his sling and pulling out his combat knife. The weird, dim, sourceless glow that was the only light in the compartment gleamed off the razor-sharp edge. With the same exaggerated and dangerous calm, he turned to Bannon while keeping his eyes fixed on Ombro’s. “You know, sir, this guy might want us to think he’s not worried, but I saw the look in his eyes when we first made entry. I think if I start cutting pieces off him, he might just be more likely to cooperate.”

There was a flicker in the strange man’s expression. Bannon watched him with hooded eyes for a moment, letting his gaze move to Hern’s knife. Then he moved slightly closer to the captive. “I don’t know why this ship is here, or what role you might play. I’ll worry about that later. But right now, you’re going to show us what we need to get off this ship—or you’re going to die.” He glanced meaningfully at the blade hovering close to the man’s throat. “I don’t think Sergeant Hern will make it quick or painless, either.”

The fear had come back into the man’s expression. “You don’t understand…”

“I don’t need to. That will be for Intelligence to worry about when we get back to our people. How many security personnel aboard this ship?”

The man’s eyes turned back to Hern’s blade, which was even closer to where his jaw met his neck. For a brief moment Bannon thought he was still going to resist, but then his eyes flicked to the door, and the silent, deserted corridor beyond. A decision was made.

“There aren’t many. This isn’t a troopship. There might be a dozen with the training and the implants for combat aboard.”

Bannon noted the mention of “implants,” but let it be. Again, that was for Intelligence to go over later.

Presuming they ever got off this ship and back to friendly space.

He glanced at Hern, who was still watching their prisoner closely, ready to start carving on him if Bannon gave the word. He saw his squad sergeant’s eyes narrow, thinking back over the number of alien shooters they’d killed already. There couldn’t be that many left.

But it could take only one fighter, armed and properly positioned, to kill them all.

“All right, then. Where is the command center?” The vaguest outline of a plan was starting to take shape in Bannon’s mind. It was a long shot, but if they were as far from any friendly system as he feared, then there might not be any other choice. “I presume you understand the language, so you can translate the controls.”

It took a second for the idea to get through to the man. His eyes widened. “Are you insane?”

Bannon ignored the question. “You have a choice. You can help us, or Sergeant Hern can slit your throat and we’ll do it the hard way.”

Bannon wasn’t sure, right at that moment, how much of that was bravado. There’s a great deal more a man might accomplish when he has no escape and no other options. There was a reason that sound strategists always advised leaving the enemy an escape route.

The man swallowed, hard, then nodded. “The shaft leading to the upper decks is two doors over.”

“Move.” There was no way Bannon was going to take lead and have this man behind any of them. He might be submissive now, with Hern’s blade at his throat, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn on them in a heartbeat if he thought he saw the chance.

This was a human working for aliens who were actively trying to provoke a war between the Council of Corvan and the Grand Democracy of Zolah. There was no telling where he came from or what his reasoning was. That meant he couldn’t ever be trusted, at least not without the immediate threat of painful death.

The man known as Ombro led the way about a quarter of the way around the ring corridor before touching a depression in the bulkhead next to another membrane. It retracted into the threshold, somewhat more slowly than when pierced by a bullet or knife point. Beyond was a ladder leading both up and down. In zero G, it would be easy enough to negotiate. Unfortunately, the ladderwell was narrow enough that they were going to have to go single file.

Bannon waved Ombro inside. “One wrong move or shout, and I’ll kill you.”

The man looked at the rifle that was still pointed in his direction, nodded stiffly and jerkily, and started up the ladder, pulling himself along several rungs at a time. Bannon followed, his rifle’s buttstock tucked under his arm, the muzzle still pointed at their prisoner, pulling himself along with only one hand.

They climbed rapidly up the ladder, passing about twenty decks before the man who called himself Ombro halted and reached for the control. Bannon hooked a boot in the ladder to hold himself in place and put both hands on his rifle. This was where Ombro might try to betray them, and he was bound and determined to kill the man if he started to yell or make a break for it.

The captive noticed, and he very carefully and slowly activated the membrane and waited for Bannon to start to move before he began to pull himself through the opening. Even then he moved with great caution, obviously doing his best not to give Bannon any reason to shoot him.

Bannon followed him into the compartment, moving quickly as Hern flung himself up the ladder to follow. The two of them made entry less than a second apart, splitting to cover most of the compartment as they went in.

The room was the largest they’d seen since the docking bay. It appeared to take up the entirety of the inner hull, and the ladder exit was one of three spaced evenly around the perimeter. Alien or not, this was fairly obviously the control room. The same oddly proportioned consoles ringed a holo tank, where a detailed holo of what was recognizably Zhogalgan and its moons glowed in the otherwise dim surroundings.

Several aliens were spaced around the holo tank, and they all looked up at the movement from the doorway. One let out a squawk that sounded almost panicked and made a grab for what might have been a weapon.

Hern shot it, sending a spray of blue fluid drifting through the holo.

Bannon hoped that the others, without their security personnel, would surrender, or at least panic and run for the other two ladders. Unfortunately, after a long hesitation while Alexius and Lewiski swam into the room, Lewiski stationing himself where he could watch at least two of the ladders, all but one of the aliens sprang away from their consoles and rushed at the Corvanites with a chorus of strange, buzzing screams.

The stuttering thunder of gunfire cut those screams off in mere seconds, the last attacking alien taking three rounds to the face, its cratered head snapping backward and putting it into a slow-motion cartwheel, drifting back toward the holo tank.

The remaining alien was still at the console, staring at them. It said something in a buzzing, clicking, incomprehensible language. Then it stiffened, and blue fluid began to leak from its mouth and eyes.

Their human prisoner was floating nearby, seemingly frozen. His face was locked in a rictus of pain, though he was still breathing and blinking rapidly.

“What just happened?” Hern was swapping magazines. “Why did they do that?”

Ombro didn’t answer. He was drifting slowly toward the far bulkhead, staring fixedly at the consoles.

“Grab him.” Bannon started toward the holo tank. He couldn’t read the angular alien writing, but he didn’t have to read the writing to recognize the scene on display.

It was the area around Zhogalgan. The holo was extremely detailed, including the designs of the ships in orbit over Zhogalgan. He was easily able to figure out who was Corvanite, who was Eurasian, and who was Zolarian. The holo was large enough to include all of Zhogalgan’s moons, as well. And just beyond the farthest moon, using that body to hide itself from the ships around Zhogalgan, was another ship that Bannon recognized, though he had never laid eyes on it until today.

It was the alien ship he was aboard right now.

He had indeed moved through a wormhole—but he hadn’t gone far.

There was a ship moving toward that far moon, coming on fast. A Corvanite vessel. It already had its fighters deployed.

Bannon looked up at their prisoner. “Ombro. Where are the comms?”

The man hadn’t moved, but his drift continued. He wasn’t blinking, and now Bannon wasn’t sure he was breathing. Blood bubbled at his nose.

“Damn.” He looked again at the holo. It was hard to judge distances without being able to read the notations, but that ship might be within range of personal comms.

It was a long shot, but his personal comm was all he had at the moment.

“Corvanite vessel, this is Lieutenant Ulric Bannon, commanding Third Phalanx, 102nd Company.” Even as he sent the message, hoping and praying that the alien starship’s hull wouldn’t block the signal, he felt the spacecraft shudder. Had something just exploded somewhere? The holo tank flickered. “I am aboard the alien craft above the far moon with three of my men. We do not have hardsuits and require extract.”

The ship shuddered again, and the holo plot went out. The sourceless glow seemed to get dimmer.

Hern had caught Ombro, and now shoved him away. “He’s dead, sir.”

Bannon repeated his call. There might have been a reply, but it was faint and unreadable.

“Back to the docking bay.” They were rapidly running out of options. “The main controls here look dead, but maybe the smaller ship is still operational.” Though there was still the matter of figuring out how to fly it.

“Maybe we should check this guy’s quarters again,” Lewiski said. He was watching the ladders, but no more of the aliens were coming up. “If he’s human, maybe he wasn’t the only one. Maybe there are spacesuits.”

“It’s worth a try.” Bannon was starting to resign himself to the fact that they were dead. His guess was that the one alien that hadn’t tried to rush them had initiated a self-destruct sequence. Maybe that was protocol when the command center was breached?

If they survived the next few minutes, he might have time to contemplate that question.

Around them, the ship twisted and shuddered, like some great beast in its death throes.

CHAPTER 45

The artillery came howling down out of the sky, hammering into the staging area just as Draven got to cover, hoping that he really was the last and that none of his boys and girls were still out in the open. Sotero might be in command, half the company might be replacements, but they were still his.

The impacts and following explosions made the ground itself heave, and Draven felt as if the universe’s biggest hammer was beating at his skull, despite the cushioning of his helmet and the bunker walls between him and the beaten zone. Outside, fountains of dirt, rocks, and smoke were blasted skyward as the whole world seemed to shake.

There was no engaging the enemy and holding them back while that was going on. The Zolarians could only hunker down and hope to survive.

Two questions came to Draven’s mind as the shock waves rippled through air, rock, and metal. Would the otuchans use the bombardment to cover their advance, or would they simply sit back and pound the staging area to sand? And second, how many of those rockets were the more effective, off-world variants that the Zolarians themselves had furnished to the reptilian aliens in order to help them drive the Corvanites off Zhogalgan?

He knew he’d never get an answer to the second question. The first might be answered when he was dead.

Glancing around the bunker, he saw that most of the soldiers in there with him were not handling the bombardment well. Not surprising. None of them had ever been under an onslaught like this.

He’d never been under a bombardment like this. A handful of insurgent mortars on Torend, or a single orbital missile strike from a commandeered Dawning Epoch patrol ship, were nothing in comparison to this.

The pounding continued for what felt like a small eternity. By the time a sudden quiet fell, rocks and dirt still raining down out of the sky, half of the kids in the bunker were visibly shaking, even in their hardsuits.

As soon as the bombardment stopped, though. Draven was moving, grabbing the nearest trooper and pushing him toward the exit. “If they’ve stopped, that means they’re getting close enough that they’re worried about hitting their own people. Get to fighting positions.” He keyed his comm as he grabbed two more and got them moving. “Captain Sotero, First Sergeant Draven.”

There was no reply at first. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Draven began to wonder if he’d just lost a second company commander.

“I’m here, First Sergeant.” Sotero sounded a little punch-drunk. “What’s happening?”

“The bombardment’s lifted, sir. I suspect that the assault isn’t far behind. I’m getting all hands to the defense positions.” He ducked out into the dust-shadowed open beyond the bunker as he spoke.

There weren’t many defensive positions left. At least not at the perimeter. He could see two of the guard towers already demolished, fingers of debris reaching for the sky. Making a snap decision, he activated the all call on the comms. “Able Company, fall back to Phase Line Two. The perimeter cannot be held. I say again, fall back to Phase Line Two.”

Turning toward the second row of hasty fighting positions that had been dug with devices not dissimilar to the Corvanite cratering charges, he saw a ragged moonscape of artillery shell craters, some of which had probably obliterated their prepared fighting positions.

Beside him, one of the younger soldiers had stopped and stared. “That looks like the phase line is gone, First Sergeant.”

“It’s not gone, son. It’s just changed shape.” Draven pointed. “Those craters should provide us with enough cover. Go.”

He held his position, peering over the top of the bunker where he’d taken shelter. The murk of dust and smoke made it hard to see, but there was definitely movement along the high ground outside the fence. There were also a few holes already blown in the fence—whether by artillery or direct fire from otuchan crawlers, he didn’t know.

“Combat lasers! To the flanks, get lines of fire on those gaps!” He started toward the nearest laser team and directed them toward a covered position where they would have a shot at the nearest gap.

He’d barely gotten them set up and the power pack plugged in, and was about to get up and move to the next fighting position, when the first crawler loomed in the gap in the wall, its cannon questing about like some alien predator sniffing for prey.

Draven dropped into the crater next to the laser team and three other riflemen. “Aim for that turret. Defang the beast.” He’d have to trust his subordinate leaders to have gotten enough of their people to cover and into position to fight.

The first beams struck the crawler just below the turret, superheating the armor plating just above the narrow viewing blocks and blasting glowing shards of metal away from it with a harsh, resounding crack.

Unfortunately, there was so much dust in the air that the laser traced a bright, glowing line through the murk, pointing straight back at their position. Otuchan bullets were already starting to snap overhead, some kicking up gouts of dirt in front of them.

Draven put his aiming pip near a muzzle flash. “Hit it again! Take it out!” He opened fire, stitching bullets across the gap in the wall, hoping to at least drive the otuchans back.

The beam flashed through the dust and smoke again just as the cannon spoke, vomiting flame toward the Zolarian position. The shell missed by a hair’s breadth, detonating just past the crater and showering the Zolarians with debris as the shock wave slapped them from behind.

In the meantime, the laser crew had corrected their aim, and the cannon’s breach blew apart under the pulse of over a million joules delivered in a fraction of a second.

Unfortunately, while it had disarmed the vehicle, it hadn’t stopped it. It continued to roll forward, crushing the remains of the wall underneath its wheels, while more otuchan foot mobiles followed, using it as cover. Draven was doing what he could to shoot under the crawler, but the wheels were heavy enough that his bullets weren’t slowing it down.

Then more cannon fire boomed somewhere off to the left, answered by increasingly frantic laser and small-arms fire. It boomed again and again, joined by another, slightly deeper cough of a different weapon.

It sounded like the left flank was already collapsing.

Draven was about to bark at the laser team, but their next pulses punched right through the crawler’s cockpit. There was a flare behind the vision block, and the vehicle slowed and began to swerve to one side, hitting the edge of the gap in the wall with a crunch that was audible even over the thunder of weapons fire.

The laser crew raked the otuchan infantry that were still trying to get past the wreck with laser pulses, cutting some of them down and setting them on fire. Draven shot one more, then scrambled to his feet and ran toward the intensifying rumble of the firefight toward the south end of the compound.

The terrain had been so torn up by the artillery barrage that he had to scramble in and out of shell craters and occasionally had to throw himself flat as bullets ripped through the air overhead. From the sounds, some were the heavy, native otuchan rounds, while others were lighter, probably from the Wathelet rifles they’d so eagerly provided the aliens, sure that they’d be so grateful for the help that they’d only target the Corvanites.

He slid into another crater as a grenade exploded nearby, almost knocking him flat. He felt shrapnel hammer into his hardsuit, and a sting near his shoulder told him that at least one of the fragments had gotten past the armor and into the synthetic fatigues underneath.

In the rush to get to cover, he almost landed in the remains of a laser crew. The support crewman was still alive, but unless he got some medical attention fast, he wouldn’t be for long. All that was left of the gunner was his lower abdomen and his legs. The crater blasted in the back of the position explained all too much.

So did the three-wheeled crawler crunching through the detritus, rocking up out of a shell crater only about fifty meters away, with more otuchan fighters jogging along behind it and off to its flanks, most of their attention now on the source of the flickering green lines stabbing through the dust and smoke off to Draven’s left.

Swinging the toppled laser back up onto its tripod, he checked it quickly. “Please, please, please work.” The sights were working, and the power cable seemed to be intact. He pivoted the tube toward the oncoming crawler, put the sights roughly where the cockpit was, and pressed the butterfly triggers.

The laser hummed and a bright green line flickered through the haze to flare against the metal, exploding the hull into glowing fragments. Three more pulses, and something in the interior began to burn, flames licking in the opening and smoke pouring from the turret.

A larger explosion thumped somewhere beyond the burning hulk of the crawler, answered by a hammering series of reports that struck the Zolarian positions with a series of bright flashes that were immediately occluded by the sprays of dust, fragmentation, smoke, and less wholesome debris.

“This is Sotero.” The captain’s voice over the comm was hoarse and desperate. “We have to fall back to Phase Line Two. We need all possible fire support!”

Draven pivoted his laser. He had too much on his hands to run to the captain’s aid right at the moment, as the otuchans who had been using the three-wheeled crawler as cover were now aware of him and had started to take his position under fire. A heavy bullet smacked into the wall of the crater behind him, and he raked the rear of the vehicle—and the otuchans on foot behind it—with a series of laser pulses, running the capacitors dry while the power pack labored to recharge them.

He spared a glance at the sky, shrouded in dust and smoke as it was. Sotero should have been able to contact Region Command, or even the Fraternity in orbit. So where were the VTOLs, the starfighters, the transports with their relief? Was General Greaney so fixated on the Corvanites that he’d let a company of his own get massacred by the otuchans?

“Sergeant Ferrier!” He thought that was the closest. The tactical display in the helmet HUD was dialed down to allow him to see, so he didn’t have individual locator icons turned on.

Ferrier was closer than he’d thought. The man dropped into the hole next to him, almost landing on the half a body next to the laser. He didn’t react to the carnage; Ferrier was one of the more jaded of his platoon sergeants. The man had been on the intervention in the Aleria system. That had gotten ugly, and it was doubtful that Ferrier would ever see anything that would rattle him ever again.

“What do you need, First Sergeant?”

“I need two squads covering that opening, and two to hold here. If we can hit this penetration on the flank, we might be able to stop it.” He glanced upward again. “Failing that, be ready to fall back again.”

How much of this installation can we afford to give up? Will we be any better off when we’re falling back across the badlands to the east?

A glance at the forbidding rocks in that direction wasn’t encouraging.

Ferrier was already getting his platoon moved into position. Draven couldn’t see Lieutenant Sublette; maybe he was still holding to cover, or maybe he was dead. “Hold here as long as you can, but if you can’t, then get back to Phase Line Three.” Draven grabbed Ferrier’s pauldron, making sure that the platoon sergeant was listening. “Do not get cut off.”

Ferrier nodded, then turned to getting his people into position. Draven left the laser to them and scrambled up out of the hole, sprinting through the swarming bullets toward Sotero’s last known position.

The otuchans had gotten farther than he’d thought. A dark shape loomed out of the dust and smoke, and Draven realized he was about to run into a crawler. He shifted his path, skidding and almost falling into another shell crater, dropping to a knee as one of the otuchans came around the back of the crawler and took a snap shot at him, the bullet almost skimming the crown of his helmet. He pivoted and shot the otuchan through the throat, then threw himself into the bottom of the crater before scrambling out and running for his life, more heavy bullets chasing him, kicking up gouts of dirt and fragments of rock behind his heels.

“Friendly coming in!” He used his helmet’s external speakers to make his voice boom out over the thunder of the fight. He threw himself into another fighting position, avoiding the deadly green lines of light strobing through the smoke. “Where’s Captain Sotero?”

One of the soldiers pointed. Draven nodded, got up again, and ran.

Captain Sotero was in one of the sole surviving prepared fighting positions. It was farther back than most of the others, which was surprising, given his eagerness for combat before this, but sometimes mass destruction puts things in perspective. Instead of trying to fight, he was bent over the high-powered comm unit, doing his job.

Sotero looked up as Draven dropped into the hole beside him. “I’m trying to get us support, but this attack is the biggest we’ve ever seen, so support is spread thin. It’s all along the line of no man’s land, all along the Zolarian zone.” He let out a choked, humorless chuckle, but quickly stifled it. Draven could understand, even if he was worried that the captain might be on the edge of hysterics. Sotero hadn’t shown much of a sense of humor or irony so far. “They seem to be avoiding the Corvanites for the moment.”

“How many of our forces are currently engaged with the Corvanites?” Draven peered over the lip of the fighting position. The fire teams to right and left were engaging the otuchans furiously, all restraint enforced by the rules of engagement prior now forgotten in the sheer necessity of survival. Muzzle flashes and laser pulses flickered across the line, punctuated by the heavy impacts of bullets, cannon shells, and the occasional small rocket. Even as he looked, one of those rockets slammed into the hole only two positions to the right, obliterating an entire fireteam in an ugly black cloud and a heavy thud.

“Too many. That entire strike force that left from here is trying to disengage and return to support, but they’re getting hammered. It sounds like it’s the same all along the DMZ.” Sotero’s voice dropped a little, sounding almost rueful. “The Corvanites were more prepared for our strikes than we expected.”

“They’re Corvanites, and they think of us as the next worst thing to Newlanders.” Draven almost spat the words, which were nearly drowned out by another series of thumping cannon shots that went just overhead to spend their fury on some containers beyond. “If there was anything predictable about this situation, especially after that ‘arm the otuchans’ fiasco, it was that they were going to be ready for us to try to attack them.”

Sotero cursed. “And now that we’re faced with exactly what Region Command has insisted wasn’t going to happen if we handled this right, we can’t even use the joint comms to request the Corvanites’ help.” He slammed a gauntleted fist into the dirt next to the comm unit.

He’d barely spoken the words when the comm unit signaled an incoming call on that very channel. Draven frowned as he looked down at the comm unit, then looked up at Sotero, who was staring at him presumably with the same vaguely shocked expression that Draven wore, though the dust and tint of his visor hid it.

“This is Captain Sotero, Able Company, Second Battalion, 220th Regiment.”

“Captain, this is Sergeant Killian. I have two flights of gunships on station.” There was a note of reluctance in the distinctly Corvanite-accented voice on the comm. “I have orders to call fire in your support, since your forces have disengaged, whatever that means.”

Draven and Sotero shared a look. Draven was putting the pieces together, and he suspected the captain was doing the same.

The otuchan offensive was turning into such a disaster for the Zolarians that General Greaney must have set his political career to the torch and called off the operation against the Corvanites. Draven wondered just how much the man had been forced to fall on his own sword in order to get the Corvanites to agree to joint air support.

“Acknowledged, Sergeant Killian.” Sotero had apparently decided not to look too closely at where their salvation was coming from. “Stand by for targets.”

As he began to call out directions, distances, and target descriptions, the first of the stoop-winged Corvanite VTOLs came out of the south, punching through the drifting smoke as they came in low over the ridgeline on the other side of the river. Lasers strobed through the smoke and dust as heavy cannon fire tore into the heavy crawlers and the otuchan foot mobiles alongside.

The VTOLs pulled up with a deep, vibrating growl and banked back toward the DMZ. Otuchan cannon fire followed them, but the pilots were good.

On the ground, the otuchan fire had suddenly slackened, and as the Zolarians began to intensify their own fire, Draven saw that some of the nearest crawlers had already started to pull back.

Leaning forward, he brought his rifle to bear and looked for targets.

It was going to take some time before this fight was over, but it didn’t look like they were going to die this day.

He’d leave the repercussions to the officers.

CHAPTER 46

The twisting and shuddering was getting worse as Bannon and his companions propelled themselves down the ladder toward the docking bay. The smell of a weird, tangy smoke was getting thicker, and unless Bannon was imagining it, all circulation of the atmosphere had stopped. The ship was dying around them, and Bannon could only hope they’d find some way off before it was nothing but an airless hulk, drifting in space until Zhogalgan’s sun went nova.

It was odd, facing death this way, and realizing how much he still wanted to live. Death in combat was one thing. It was something he had grown comfortable with back in his teens, on the agoge field. He’d buried his share of friends and comrades along the way since, on world after world. It was an inevitability that he thought of and dismissed with every recitation of the Corvanite motto.

Dying of asphyxiation in a derelict alien spacecraft that had begun to destroy itself… that was something else.

He felt certain now that that last alien must have triggered the process. He was surprised that the whole ship hadn’t simply gone supercritical and turned into a nuclear fireball above the moon, but as he swam toward the lower decks through a ladderwell that was filling with smoke, the ship’s eerie light fading away to nothing, he was glad that it hadn’t. Not yet anyway.

They reached the deck where they’d captured Ombro, and Lewiski pulled his knife to reopen the membrane. The ship shuddered again, throwing him against the wall, but Bannon grabbed him and steadied him. Fortunately, even without power, the membrane snapped open at the touch of the blade.

They spread out with weapon lights leading the way in the darkness, stabbing white cones through the drifting smoke. An alien floated nearby, and two lights, backed by weapon sights, snapped toward it.

It was still and lifeless, spinning slowly in zero G, blue fluid leaking from its mouth.

“It’s like they all killed themselves,” Alexius said. He sounded haunted.

“Either that, or it’s part of the destruct sequence.” Hern had turned toward Ombro’s quarters, hopefully where they remembered, given the lack of gravity and the twisting and shuddering that had shaken the starship. “That guy did mention implants.”

“Was that why he was cooperating with them?” Alexius looked around the inside of the dying starship. “Did they kidnap him and then stick a bunch of hardware in his head to make him work for them? Whoever they are?”

“No way of knowing, now that he’s dead.” Hern seemed uninterested. “Whether he was kidnapped or a true believer, he paid the price for it.”

The membrane over Ombro’s quarters snapped open. A quick search turned up no spacesuits, no emergency life support pods, nothing. “Keep pushing toward the docking bay.” Bannon could almost feel the dread building in Lewiski and Alexius. Hern was probably resigned to death, but the younger men were feeling the same thing that Bannon was.

Not like this.

They continued around the central well of the ship toward the docking bay, which seemed somehow smaller now, in the dark. Another membrane, partway around the balcony, opened up onto a control center, and there were spacesuits there.

All of them designed for the aliens.

Bannon sighed. If the aliens had been willing to commit suicide rather than be captured, maybe that had been extended to their human allies as well, and they hadn’t been assigned any role that would require them to go outside the ship into space.

He hesitated as he faced the entry to the docking bay. There was no indicator, no way to know whether or not there was air on the other side, or hard vacuum. The ship they’d come aboard was out there. He could see that much through the transparency between the two membrane-covered doors leading onto the docking bay. There was no guarantee that it would fly. But it was the only way off.

If they could get to it without committing suicide by void. He moved to the viewports overlooking the docking bay, and was confronted by the sight of hard, bright stars on the other side of the auxiliary craft. The bay was indeed open to space.

He decided to make one more attempt at communication. “Corvanite vessel, this is Lieutenant Ulric Bannon, aboard the alien starship.”

He wasn’t expecting anything. There was no way to be sure that his personal comm would get through the hull and to that oncoming Corvanite ship. And after everything that had gone wrong already, he was not feeling especially optimistic.

The galaxy seemed to have a few surprises left, however.

“…tenant Bannon, this is Firebolt Three. Say again.”

Firebolt Three. That was one of the Dragon 27s off the Thunderer. “This is Lieutenant Bannon. I am aboard the alien starship with three of my men. We do not have vacuum suits, and the ship appears to be self-destructing. We don’t know how much air we have left.”

“Lieutenant Bannon, this is Captain Tomas of the Thunderer. We are equipping a drop shuttle to rendezvous with you now. Do what you can to secure your position, and they will breach within an hour.”

Bannon acknowledged, looking around the docking bay’s control room, lit only by their weapon lights. Though the destruct sequence seemed to have shut down the power, the membranes were still shut. Bannon didn’t think they could risk going back the way they’d come, given the smoke that had been filling the corridors as they’d returned to the docking bay. “We’ll be here as long as the air holds out.”

***

Bannon floated, motionless, breathing as shallowly as he could. The others were all doing the same, facing the hatch leading out of the docking bay control room, weapons pointed but not moving. The air had gone stale an hour before. Smoke still hung, unmoving, threatening to make every breath into a cough.

Bannon was starting to lose hope that their comrades were going to get to them in time. The bangs and shudders had stopped some time ago, but they were slowly choking to death on a rapidly toxifying atmosphere. and the entire hulk seemed to be completely dead in space. A hiss on the other side of one of the membrane hatches had confirmed his decision to stay where they were. Unless he missed his guess, the air was leaking out of the hull.

“Lieutenant Bannon, this is Sergeant Carson. Can you hear me, sir?” The comm signal was surprisingly strong. Bannon wondered if he hadn’t passed out for a moment.

“Yes, I can hear you.” His words were getting slightly slurred. The lack of oxygen was getting bad.

“Stand clear of the hatchway, sir. We’re about to breach.”

Bannon was about to say something about how it only took a single puncture, but a moment later the membrane in front of Alexius snapped open.

Two figures in hardsuits pulled themselves in, rifles in their hands. A breath of fresh air came in with them. Beyond the hatchway, a flexible docking tube led back through the docking bay to where a Corvanite drop shuttle was clamped to the derelict starship’s hull.

“Come with us, sir. We’ll finish securing the hulk.” One of the hardsuited figures was already steering Alexius into the docking tube.

Bannon managed to follow, his head clearing a little as the oxygen-rich atmosphere in the tube filled his lungs. In moments they were aboard the docking shuttle, clinging to the side of the massive, oblong shape of the alien starship like a Toanan bloodsucker.

He stiffened to attention as he realized that the figure waiting in the shuttle was Commander Fox himself. The commander acknowledged the four men’s salutes and turned to Bannon with a faint smile.

“Congratulations, Lieutenant. You may be the first man alive to capture a ghost ship.” He sobered. “Let’s just hope that it was soon enough to head off what these alien bastards tried so hard to put into motion.”

EPILOGUE

Smoke still rose over Outpost Regula.

Draven was limping slightly. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he’d taken some shrapnel to the leg, in between the segments of his armor, in addition to the wound he’d taken to his shoulder. The medical packs should heal it up in a couple of weeks, but until then, it hurt.

The company’s area had come through relatively unscathed. The long-range bombardment that the otuchans had launched—obviously previously targeted, which told Draven that the lizards had conducted thorough reconnaissance of the Zolarian zone before they’d launched their attack.

Or maybe those aliens who had built the strange craft that had staged a Corvanite air attack on the support base had given them the information.

There were already rumors starting to float around the company, rumors that the Corvanites had found and destroyed an alien craft that had disguised itself as a Zolarian starship and fired on their ships. Officially, Draven had needed to repeat what Region Command was saying, that those rumors were completely unfounded, and not to be given any credence. Privately, he suspected they were true. He wondered how much that Corvanite lieutenant had been involved.

He stepped into the company office, and found it deserted. Rustling from the captain’s quarters drew him that way.

Captain Sotero was in worse shape than Draven. He had med packs over one arm and his neck. He’d taken a glancing hit that had gone underneath his helmet’s mandible just before the otuchans had completed their withdrawal.

Now he was packing his deployment case.

“Are you going somewhere, sir?”

Sotero looked up, paused, then sighed. “The easy answer, First Sergeant, is that we all are. I just got confirmation that the Zhogalgan intervention is over, and we have three hundred hours to be off the planet and on our way back to Zolah. That was the price we paid for the Corvanites breaking off hostilities and offering us fire support. The hard answer is that yes, I am going somewhere. As of our return home, I will no longer be Able Company’s commanding officer. In fact, I won’t be any kind of officer at all, and I’ll probably be lucky to make any sort of living without changing my name.”

Draven frowned. While he suspected he knew the answer, he still had to ask. “Why?”

Sotero looked tired. “I cooperated with the Corvanites without clearance or permission from Region Command. It doesn’t matter that it saved what was left of the company and started to break the otuchan offensive. We were humiliated as a peacekeeping force, and that means that all the officers are going to pay the price.”

Draven shook his head. He knew this was part of the reality of being an officer in the Grand Army, but that didn’t make it any less appalling. “I suspect that General Greaney is going to pay an even heavier price.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt. He’s going to have to go into exile if he wants to keep his head. The Assembly won’t openly try to kill him, but that won’t keep them from stirring up the mobs. Or even just the right imbalanced idiot who might try to ‘do his part’ by assassinating a man who failed so spectacularly.” Sotero started to turn back to his deployment case, then straightened and faced Draven. He seemed to be uncomfortable, as if he were trying to think of how to say something that he’d never thought he’d have to say.

“It’s been an honor, First Sergeant. I only wish that we had accomplished more.”

“You and me both, sir. You and me both.”

***

Bannon was feeling considerably more human when he reported to Commander Fox, standing appropriately at attention thanks to his mag boots. “Lieutenant Bannon reporting as ordered, sir.”

The commander wasn’t alone in his office. Captain Haarot had taken a shuttle up to the Thunderer after the starship had reentered orbit over Zhogalgan and was currently off to one side of the commander’s desk, his own mag boots keeping him nailed to the deck, his arms folded, his expression unreadable.

Commander Fox looked up from his console. “At ease, Lieutenant.” Under gravity, he might have leaned back in his chair. Instead, he simply folded his arms as he studied Bannon, who still kept his gaze fixed on a point on the bulkhead just above the commander’s head. “Recovered from your brush with death by asphyxiation?”

“Yes, sir.” He wasn’t sure why the commander had called him in, and Captain Haarot wasn’t providing any clues. “Privates Alexius and Lewiski are fine, too, as is Sergeant Hern.” Hern, predictably, was wondering when they’d be able to get back planetside.

“Good. I’ll get to the point.” Fox pivoted the console around so that Bannon could see. It displayed a detailed image of the hulk of the alien starship. “You’ve accomplished a rare coup, Lieutenant. To the best of my knowledge, no one from any known world has ever been aboard a ghost ship, let alone captured one. Even if it is a hulk.”

“I was surprised it didn’t just blow up, sir.” Commander Fox seemed to expect some sort of reply, and that was the first one that Bannon thought of.

“It might have.” Fox’s eyebrows went up. “It seems that one of you shot the hell out of the control board when you were killing the aliens that tried to rush you. Intelligence’s best guess is that you severed some of the control circuits in the process. In any case, they’re fairly convinced that the self-destruct was incomplete. Unfortunately, there’s very little tech that survived. Most of the ship is just an inert lump. However, it’s still the first ghost ship that’s been captured to our knowledge, so you should be proud.”

He stood, his mag boots fastening him to the deck, and paced to the large situation display on the bulkhead. “In truth, your encounter is the only reason we’re not at open war with the Zolarians right now. It’s too obvious that these aliens—whoever they are—were trying to precipitate such a war. The Council has decided to proceed with caution until we know more.”

Bannon flicked his gaze to Haarot, who still revealed nothing. He decided to take a chance on his newfound honor. “The Zolarians still armed the otuchans to try to get us off the planet. They still attacked our positions along the DMZ. How is any of that not an act of war?”

“It is. And don’t think for a second that the Council has disregarded any of it. The Zolarians are worthy of our greater attention, that is clear. They are attempting to build an empire, and that needs to be checked, especially in our space.” Fox turned back to him. “However, the situation on Zhogalgan has required our continued restraint.” A faint, grim smile played around his lips. “With the sudden collapse of the Zolarian zone as the otuchans—quite predictably—took advantage of their move to try to force us off the planet, Consul Abraham made some very specific demands in return for our restraint and cooperation. One of those, which they appear to be honoring, is their departure from Zhogalgan. The first ships have already left orbit for the wormhole emergence point.”

Captain Haarot finally spoke. “There’s still a great deal of work to be done on the planet. The otuchans will now need to be pacified. That will be a long, hard slog of an operation.”

“However, that won’t be your problem in the short term.” Fox returned to his desk. “Commander Huntsman is already arriving in system with the Tenth Task Group, and they will be taking over. Our deployment here is coming to an end.” He raised an eyebrow as he studied Bannon sharply. “That leaves you with two questions. First is about Sergeant Killian. He performed admirably as acting phalanx commander when your boarding action was cut short by a sudden space launch. Is he ready for promotion?”

Bannon didn’t hesitate. “Sergeant Killian was ready for promotion a year ago, sir. I will hate to lose him, but he would make a good phalanx leader.”

Fox nodded and noted something on his console. “Good. That brings me back to you, and Third Phalanx. You’ve performed just as admirably as Captain Haarot’s special task unit. Admirably enough that I’m detaching you and your phalanx to be my special task unit.

“We have been targeted by the ghost ships, Lieutenant. I don’t know where, exactly, the Council is sending us next, but you have the most immediate experience with them, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them at all.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Nealen is a former United States Marine who now writes full time for a living.

To check out Peter’s catalogue of books, visit www.americanpraetorians.com

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STAY TUNED FOR A BONUS SHORT STORY IN

EDGE OF IMPERIUM

PACIFICATION

EDGE OF IMPERIUM SHORT STORY

The drop shuttle shuddered as it penetrated deeper into the atmosphere, the temperature rising as the howl of air intensified. Sergeant Ulric Bannon glanced around the inside of the hold, checking on the rest of his squad. He had three new nuggets since that disastrous day at Ut-Os, and he hadn’t yet seen how Lewiski, Trent, and Baddlet would handle a drop.

They were Corvanites, though. The greatest warriors of the galaxy, born and bred to it. Trent held himself still, a mountain of a manutterly unperturbed by the shuttle’s movement, one hand on hisCAG-47 autogun in its cradle next to him. Bannon nodded slightly. Hehad seen enough of the autogunner’s perpetually bored attitudeaboard the Thunderer. Trent might be new to the squad, but hewasn’t new to combat drops.

Lewiski was trying hard to mirror Trent’s unperturbable mien, buthe wasn’t doing as good a job at it. The kid was fresh from theagoge field, and this was probably his first ever live drop. Thatmeant the others would have to look after him. Bannon caught Hernwatching the younger man, his faceless helmet turned up from where hewas leaning on his armored knees.

The squad was in hardsuits for this mission. A hot drop into an urban fight was likely to get close and nasty fast, and they might well need the extra armor. Not to mention that reports from Corvanite forces near Ju-Sot had reported the use of chemical weapons, though that might just have been burning robot parts.

Bannon had just turned his head to check on the third nugget, Baddlet, when the shuttle shuddered harder, this time accompanied by a loud bang and the whoop of alarms.

“We’ve been hit. Taking fire from the ground.” The pilot sounded almost bored. “Stabilizers are shot. We’re going in. Hang on.”

Their descent got noticeably steeper, and a few gauntleted handsgripped handholds overhead. Lewiski stiffened. Trent must havenoticed, because he turned to the newer soldier and said something,though to Bannon’s ears, the words were drowned out by the growinghowl and rattle of their dive toward the surface.

The shuddering got worse, the noise intensifying. They were getting deeper and deeper into the atmosphere, and Bannon could already tell that if they didn’t pull up soon, they were going to leave a pretty significant crater and not much else. He forced his breathing to slowdown, fighting back the fear that threatened to grip him. You area Corvanite. Fear is foreign. We do not fear. We do not retreat. We do not surrender. Death was inevitable, so he may as well relax and meet it.

The pilot, however, was fighting to bring them down in one piece. He could feel the shake and the roar of the engines vibrating through every fiber of the shuttle. The nose was starting to come up, but the shuddering got worse, and they were thrown to one side as a shellexploded just outside the hull, several vicious chunks of shrapnel punching through the fuselage. One embedded itself in Fernandez’s leg, while a second took off Jaksun’s head.

“Thirty seconds!” The pilot had let a bit of the strain creep into his voice, probably because he was hauling back on the yoke totry to make their crash at least potentially survivable. “Brace for impact!”

“Death comes, brothers,” Bannon said, his voice projected overthe squad comms.

“Let us go and meet it.” The chorus, some voices steady, somealmost chanting, some quavering involuntarily, came back over thecomm just before the shuttle hit with a bone-jarring impact andeverything went black.

***

16 Hours Prior

“Third Phalanx, attention!”

Mag boots clattered on the deck as the weary troops stiffened where they were, mostly pausing from cleaning weapons or scarred, dirty gear. Any man could see the strain of the last month written on all their features, despite the traditional Corvanite impassivity.

Though if the man who stalked through the hatch of the small ready room aboard the Thunderer noticed, he probably didn’t much care.

Captain Haarot was a hard man, and he looked it. The scar that tugged his mouth into a constant sneer was nearly matched by the scowl that he wore so perpetually that many of the men were convinced his death mask would bear it.

The man, simultaneously the most hated and respected in the 102ndCompany, stood just inside the compartment, that scowl still painted on his face as he looked around the room, his eyes evaluating as they went from Corvanite to Corvanite. The men stood as stiffly as they could, given the only thing holding them to the deck was their magboots. In orbit, the Thunderer was in freefall, the Council’s starship designers having forgone any rotating sections in favor of more weaponry, ammunition, and reaction mass. To make up for the deleterious effects of zero gee, the training facilities were brutal even by Corvanite standards.

“At ease.”

Mag boots rang on the deck behind the captain, and ten men entered the compartment, taking up positions behind him and assuming parade rest. Tired, jaded eyes scanned the new arrivals, seeing men as fit as all the rest of them, some with more scars than others. The man with the shaved head and half an ear wore lieutenant’s bars.

“First things first. Marentes, Willam, Sotereas, Arthur, Beck,Ronei, Beacham, Ketteren, Tostin, and Lieutenant Maraks went to meet Death in a way that did credit to the Council of Corvan. Yet the mission remains. We are Corvanites. Meet your replacements.” Haarot snapped his fingers, and the man with lieutenant’s bars stepped forward in that curious, floaty way that came from maneuvering in zero gee with mag boots. “This is your new phalanx commander, Lieutenant Hatton. He will lead you well.” The captain stiffened, and even without the call to attention, the entire phalanx followed suit. Some things you simply did not wait for in the presence of Captain Haarot. “Death comes, brothers.”

“Let us go and meet it.”

The old words echoed off the bulkheads, and Captain Haarot turned on his heel, leaving the phalanx to get to know their new commander and replacements.

“At ease, Phalanx.” Lieutenant Hatton’s voice was a gravelly rasp that sounded older and harsher than the captain’s, though as he stepped toward the status table, he waved at them all to gather round, more like a father at a campfire than a military leader, particularly a Corvanite leader. “I don’t have time for a lot of formality. We have a mission coming up, and I need all the information you can give me.”

Bannon joined the rest of his squad, stifling a sigh. Another mission. There had been a time, when he’d first reached Ka-Tos, almost a local year ago, when he would have looked forward to it. Asa Corvanite warrior, he was supposed to. This was what they lived for. Yet, after what should have been a simple punitive expedition had turned into a lengthy pacification, he was finding himself wondering just what the point was anymore.

Hatton looked around the gathered warriors. “I’ve heard that the Ka don’t like to expose themselves to combat much.”

“The rat slugs don’t like to fight, no.” Corbin, First Squad’s sergeant, leaned on the status table. “It’s part of their culture. They’ve roboticized everything, so they can’t get their soft hands dirty. They certainly can’t expose themselves to bullets.”

Hatton raised an eyebrow. “I’d heard of their extensive automation, but not that they’d turned everything over to robots. Really? Everything?”

“Everything,” Bannon confirmed. “Industry, agriculture, war. No Ka will do his own work, not if he wants to have any self-respect.”

“It seems strange that they’d fight us at all,” Hatton remarked. “Or even attack the Seeker.”

The whole war had started because the Ka had decided that the Seeker 107, one of the Council of Corvan’s survey ships, had violated their space—or at least, the space claimed by one of their Committees—and had seized it.

No one seizes a Corvanite ship. Not even one of the Earth powers. None of them had dared try, but Bannon did not doubt that the Councilwould order a punitive expedition to Earth as soon as the Eurasians or Americans laid a finger on one of their ships.

“That comes back to their culture.” Corbin couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “Because they turned all their labor over to robots, even before they got off that mudball, they assume they’re inherently superior to anyone who does their own work or their own fighting. So they couldn’t surrender to us. Instead they hidebehind the anonymity of combat robots and blame all the other Committees whenever we take casualties.”

“We haven’t been able to make any of them pay for any of it,” Bannon said. He felt like spitting on the deck. Not that it would work in freefall. “We keep pounding their robots to scrap, and they just keep sending more, without any way to determine which Committee sent them.”

Hatton smiled grimly. “Well, there’s good news on that front, Sergeant, which is why you were brought up to the Thunderer. It seems that Research has developed new sensors that can track particular robot signatures, which should allow us to trace them back to a particular Committee’s facilities.” That smile turned wolfish. “Then we can make them pay.”

Bannon glanced around at his squad, seeing the glint in a few eyes that echoed the thump of his own heart at the thought that maybe, possibly, they might be able to turn this grinding pacification into the punitive expedition it always should have been. Wars are won in the will. As long as all we do is crush expendable tin cans, that will won’t ever be crushed. If this works, then we might finally be able to touch the Ka.

“We’re going to have to wait until the scanner techs can get us a precise target, but in the meantime, we can work out the basics of a plan.” Hatton leaned on the status board and brought up the holomap of Va Sok, one of the bigger cities on the southern continent. The touch of a key highlighted a structure in the hills above it, a central main dome with three oddly spaced auxiliary structures to the northwest, south, and southeast, connected by covered causeways. “Right now, intel believes that we will be targeting one of these three structures. Each one has been identified as important to the Committee of Va Sok. We just don’t know which one is being used as their operations center. Once the most recent attack is traced, we’ll have it pinpointed. It will have to be a hot drop, so make sure your hardsuits are prepped and ammo is topped off. This is what I have in mind.” He looked around at the squad leaders. “Squad sergeants, don’t hesitate to step in if you have better ideas.”

Bannon traded a glance with Corbin. The dark, wiry man had a single eyebrow ever so slightly raised, the only expression on his otherwise still features.

“Obviously, there’s some reorganization to do first.” Hatton looked around the group of NCOs with what might have been a faint smirk. “Let’s get us nuggets placed, then we can get down to plans and contingencies…”

***

Bannon was checking over his hardsuit, mostly killing time while they waited for a target. As a sergeant, his options for conversation were essentially limited to the other squad leaders, and Corbin and Rex were still going over things with their squads. They were Corvanites, not undisciplined Zolarian egalitarians. The hierarchy was clear, and was not ignored, particularly not in Captain Haarot’s company. So he went over his suit for the fourth time, keeping his thoughts to himself.

“Sergeant Bannon.”

He looked up to see Lieutenant Hatton, his mag boots clamped to the deck, his arms folded.

The older man glanced at his hardsuit. “You’ve gone over that at least twice already.”

Bannon sighed. The new commander was wondering if one of his squad sergeants was having an attack of nerves.

He nodded toward where the new nuggets were still getting their gear stowed and simultaneously checked by Corporal Hern. “It’s not proper for a squad leader to go back to his quarters while his men still aren’t ready, sir.”

Hatton’s eyes followed Bannon’s nod, and the crow’s-feet around them deepened in what might have been the beginnings of a smile. He nodded in turn. “That’s fair.” He turned his attention back to Bannon. It seemed slightly awkward, the two of them standing there, but it was easier than trying to sit in freefall. “Tell me about yourself, Bannon.”

Bannon hesitated.

Hatton noticed. “I take it that’s not Captain Haarot’s style?”

“He’s a great warrior, sir.” Bannon had seen the captain save troops by charging into situations that would have killed a lesser man. Captain Haarot was not what anyone would call personable, but he was a good Corvanite.

“I’ve no doubt. I’ve heard that about him.” Hatton gave nothing away. “Not everyone has the same leadership style, though, not even among us Corvanites.”

Bannon held his peace for a moment. He was no longer a private who could get away with some grumbling. Criticism of his commander went against the grain of every grueling moment of training he’d gone through since he’d first set foot on the agoge field on Corvan Minor at the age of fourteen.

And yet… there had been times. The meat grinder on Ontor Seven sprang to mind, when nearly all of the First Phalanx had been wiped out, and the captain had pressed on. He shook away the memory.

“The 102nd is the best company in the galaxy, sir.”

Hatton did smile, then, if faintly. “As I would have said about the 87th, six years ago, when I pinned on my stripes.” He looked around the compartment. “Captain Haarot gets results. He’s a decorated and courageous soldier, and I would never dream of undermining him. But as you get older and advance through the ranks, Sergeant Bannon, you need to find your own path. Even as a Corvanite.”

He seemed to get pensive, his gaze continuing to rove across the Corvanite soldiers preparing for what might be their last drop. “Any man can command. Even charge in and have others follow him. But to truly lead men, sometimes it takes a different touch. Our culture elevates toughness and instant willing obedience to orders. Those are important, but equally important is knowing that Corvanites are still men, not robots. That’s what makes us better than the Ka, after all. And men still need something more than just a voice barking orders at them.”

His grin widened as he began to turn away. “And that does not make a man soft, as some of our brethren may think. Victory is victory, and a man who is inspired by love for his commander and his brothers in arms may just fight more fiercely than a man who is inspired only by fear of failure. Something to think on, Sergeant Bannon.”

That ghost of a smile crossed his seamed, deeply tanned features again, just before an alarm pinged.

Hatton looked up at the overhead. “I do believe we have our target.” He gripped Bannon’s shoulder. “Make sure your men are ready in five, Sergeant. Death comes.”

Bannon nodded. “Let us go and meet it.”

***

Time Now

Through the fog of pain and darkness, Bannon knew only that he had to get up. Had to get on his feet. He couldn’t quite grasp why, or where he was, not at first. All he knew was that it was dark, his head and his leg hurt, and something had gone very, very wrong.

He finally pried his eyelids open. He was slumped in his crash seat, still held in place by the harness. Faint light filtered through gaps rent in the assault shuttle’s hull, softened by smoke and dust.

His leg hurt because it was pinned in an awkward position by a section of the deck that had been pried up when the assault shuttle had hit a chunk of machinery, which was now protruding through the fuselage. Beside him, more of that machinery had impaled Torvald, punching clear through his hardsuit and nailing him to the overhead.

It took a second to get his leg free. Only the fact he’d been wearing his hardsuit had saved the knee. As he pried himself loose, pulling his CR-196 out of its cradle, he looked around to see Baddlet prying Hern out of his own mangled seat, and Trent and Alexius already at the smashed side hatch, covering security. Fernandez’s armor had kept the initial shrapnel wound to his leg from being fatal, but from the way he was bent and motionless in the remnant of his own crash seat, he hadn’t survived the impact.

Ducking through the hatch—it looked like one of his men had blown it open—he took stock, though it took a second of peering through the smoke and the wreckage to figure out what he was looking at.

The shuttle was partially embedded in one of the Ka’s flattened dome structures, which seemed to be connected via a tunnel arrangement to a much larger structure of the same rough shape. He couldn’t be entirely certain yet, especially since he was still shaking off what he was pretty sure was a concussion despite the protection of his helmet, but he thought they might have actually crashed on top of the objective. A look to the west showed him the southern dome, confirming it.

That wasn’t nearly as good a thing as it might seem. A moment later, as Alexius pivoted and opened fire on something Bannon couldn’t see, the reason why that wasn’t a good thing became abundantly clear.

Ducking as flechettes hissed through the air overhead, Bannon threw himself behind part of the wreckage, snapping his rifle into the stock stop mounted on his armor and flipping the sight up to the “hardsuit” setting.

Dozens of spidery black forms swarmed up the walls of the dome toward them, clinging to the vitrified brick that the Ka favored with the strange molecular adhesive they used for their battlebots’ traction control. The wan sunlight glinted off green ocular lenses as the narrow tubes of flechette launchers pivoted toward the crashed assault shuttle.

Bannon was by now entirely too familiar with standard Ka combat forms. He leveled his rifle, bracing it against a twisted structural member, and blew a trio of holes through the lead bot’s vitals. The bot froze as the bullets pulverized its control circuits, but it didn’t fall. Six of its molecular traction pads were still clinging to the wall, and they hadn’t been turned off before its control bus went silent.

The Corvanites had destroyed so many of these bots that it was almost routine.

Almost.

Bannon and Alexius stitched rounds across the swarm of spidery combat robots, punching out control cores where they could, though sometimes they had to settle for doing as much damage as possible, bullets slamming through bent legs and cylindrical, metallic thoraxes. More and more fire joined theirs as Hern got the rest of the survivors out of the wreck and into the fight.

“Any Third Phalanx units, this is Lieutenant Hatton.” The lieutenant’s voice sounded steady, despite the gunfire that Bannon could now tell was rattling across the Ka installation from more than one place. “First Squad and I have landed on the LZ, and we are starting toward the objective. Give position and status reports when you are able, and we will arrange a rendezvous before we push deeper in.”

More of those strange, chirping alarms that the Ka used were sounding from somewhere deeper into the installation, and another voice came over the comms, this one strained as the man tried to maintain his calm. “This is Private Pardo. Our shuttle has crashed on top of the main structure. Sergeant Ferro and Corporal Dees are dead. There are only four of us left, and the shuttle is about to fall off the side of the building.”

“All right, Private Pardo.” Lieutenant Hatton’s voice was calm and reassuring. “You’re in charge now. That means you need to keep your head and act quickly, to save yourself and your squadmates. You are a Corvanite and a veteran, Pardo. You can do this. Are all of your men ambulatory?”

“Yes, sir.” Something about Hatton’s voice had calmed the young man down.

“Good. If you can, breach the roof and find yourself a hardpoint. Put down a ping with your location and we will move to you.”

“Copy that, sir.” Pardo still sounded shaken, but he was getting his bearings again.

Bannon tuned the rest of the conversation out. He had more pressing issues, even as the flow of spidery combat robots slowed, some of the destroyed units still clinging to the wall and roof, others having fallen toward the grassland below. The storm of gunfire had torn through the mechanicals just like they had in almost every other engagement for the last year.

The Ka didn’t care. These were expendable toys, nothing else.

With the ebb in the fight, and with his head starting to clear, Bannon looked back at the condition of the shuttle. While it hadn’t hit in quite so precarious a position as Second Squad’s, the crumpled nose—there was no hope at all for the flight crew—was buried in the side of the dome. Third Squad had some room to work with, but they were still exposed, high up, and had the bulk of the installation between them and the rest of the phalanx. The survivors of the crash were out on the half-caved-in roof, taking cover within the wreckage or among the antennas and other boxes that studded the surface.

That cover had to keep them protected from multiple sides, too. As Trent tore the last three combat robots to scrap with a burst of autogun fire, Bannon spotted the shrouded emplacements on the hills around the installation, their much larger muzzles still pointed at the sky.

Research’s new sensors might have tracked the combat robots’ signatures back to this location, but somehow they failed to note the presence of stationary emplacements.

Either that, or Command didn’t think it was worth the risk of warning the Ka that we were coming by bombarding them beforehand.

“This is Bannon. I have seven effectives remaining, and we are on the peripheral structure to the south of Second Squad’s crashsite.” He was already up and moving, though without the robots’ molecular adhesive pads, it was a little more difficult to negotiate the slope of the dome. Mag boots wouldn’t cling to the brick. “We have repulsed a sortie of combat robots, and we are moving on the hatch to make entry. We’ll move through the structure to link up with Second Squad.”

Even for Corvanites, saying “the remnant of Second Squad” would be a bit too much over comms. After almost a local year, they were all relatively certain that the Ka had not come close to cracking Corvanite encryption, which made it easier to talk normally over comms, but Captain Haarot still sought to reinforce comms discipline, just because.

“Good copy, Bannon.” Hatton sounded like he was already on the move. “We will breach the north door of the main structure and join you at the crash site.”

Summ and Alexius were already moving up, pushing ahead of him. Bannon lengthened his strides, unwilling to let either of the younger privates get too far ahead. Corvanite leaders were expected to lead.

The dead robots had left a trail to their sally port, but it was almost twenty yards below, at ground level. There was no way down unassisted, not without sliding down nearly fifteen yards of sheer wall.

Fortunately, the Corvanites had come prepared for urban operations.

Spikes slammed into the vitrified brick, unspooling monofilament rappelling lines, and seconds later all seven Corvanite warriors were slipping down the side of the dome, hardly pausing to kick off as they descended.

Bannon and Hern waited until the others were moving, stationed at the flanks, covering the sally port from above. As soon as the squad was on its way, Bannon leaned forward, his rappelling line hooked into the back of his hardsuit, and a second later he was running down the wall, face toward the ground, his rifle held ready. He outpaced the rest of the squad in a half dozen strides, Hern doing the same on the other side.

It was a good thing, too. The rest of the squad still had their backs to the sally port when the next wave of combat robots came swarming out.

They exploded from the sally port as if they were eager to come to grips with the Corvanites, though it was really more that they were individually programmed and weren’t all that coordinated. The Ka, for all their prowess with robotics, hadn’t perfected networked swarm tactics. They climbed the wall quickly, flechettes stuttering from their weapons, most of them skipping off Corvanite armor, many more flying off into the air. These bots hadn’t been equipped to take on hardsuits.

Bannon and Hern opened fire. They were still bounding down the wall, so the precise shots on central processing units they’d managed before were made all the more difficult, especially since there was no cover and they had to keep moving to avoid catching enough flechettes to compromise their hardsuits’ armor. But sometimes accuracy by volume worked, too, and in seconds they were blowing robots off the wall with long bursts of 6mm fire. Bullets chopped through chassis and spidery legs, and fragments of Ka robotics spun and tumbled to the ground, some of the larger chunks striking other robots coming out of the port.

Then Hern got tired of it and lobbed a 37mm grenade into the middle of the swarm.

The explosion shredded at least three of the robots, the concussion washing over the wall and scattering fragments far and wide. The handful of robots beyond them were either torn off the wall by the shock wave, the blast of fragmentation and the larger chunks of destroyed machines, or were quickly torn apart by more 6mm fire as Bannon slowed his plunge toward the ground, taking his off hand off his rifle and tapping the brake on his rappel line. He and Hern reached the sally port at almost the same time, Bannon letting his rifle hang on its sling while he prepped a second grenade.

With a heave, he hooked the small, egg-shaped explosive through the port’s opening. The concussion, focused by the tunnel, was even more pronounced than the 37mm Hern had launched. Smoke, dust, and debris billowed out of the opening, with grit and a few smaller fragments hissing on Bannon’s hardsuit, but then he was swinging into the sally port, leading with his weapon, Hern right behind him and the rest of the squad dropping in behind, their weapons already pointed.

Bannon released his rappelling line as he found his feet. The passageway ahead was littered with fragments of the Ka’s machines, and one of them was still trying to move forward, even with all bu tthree legs gone and its flechette launcher mangled. Bannon shot it through the CPU, just to be on the safe side.

It was only a matter of time before the Ka started to add redundancies to their robots. That they hadn’t yet was just another sign of their arrogance and complacency.

The passage was short for a human. A Ka could probably negotiate it with reasonable ease—not that they would; that was for robots and lesser beings—but Bannon had to hunch as he worked his way through in his hardsuit, the remnants of robots crunching beneath his armored boots. It was also dark, since the robots didn’t need lighting the way living beings would. Fortunately, the helmet’s light amplification systems were working well, projecting a grayish version of their surroundings on the Corvanites’ face shields.

After a few dozen paces, the passage met another, larger corridor that appeared to curve around to right and left, possibly running all the way around the dome. Like the sally port corridor, the ring was dark. Bannon moved right, toward the arm of the installation that connected the outer dome to the larger, central structure. Hern took a step left, covering their rear while the rest of the squad followed Bannon. Bannon slowed his advance slightly, just to make sure that the rest of the squad was behind him, then continued around the circle, weapon up and waiting for the next swarm of robots.

They didn’t come, somewhat to his surprise. As they worked their way toward the ping in Bannon’s visor that indicated Second Squad’s crash site—though getting to them if they were pinned on the roof could be difficult—only non-combat machines zipped past them, and none paid the advancing infantrymen any mind. They were maintenance bots, or something similar, and fortunately none of the Corvanites wasted any rounds on them.

There was only so much ammunition a man could carry, and there were bound to still be combat robots to destroy.

Reaching the main dome, they found no defenses, no hardened doors. That was in keeping with the Ka’s arrogance, but it was still weird and disturbing. The tension mounted as they went deeper, working their way through stark, shadowed corridors toward the rendezvous point.

A distant boom rolled through the structure, making the whole dome shudder, and Bannon thought that if there had been lights in this part of the maze of corridors, they would have flickered. That had to have been Lieutenant Hatton’s breaching charges. Bannon picked up the pace.

As the echoes of the explosion died down, another sound, almost drowned out by the continuing, chirping alarms, started to make its way through the installation: gunfire. A lot of it. And as Bannon listened, still careful to cover each opening, no matter how small, in the hallway walls, he thought that some of it sounded a lot heavier than what the Corvanites had been carrying.

It sounded bad. A moment later, it got worse.

“Bannon, this is Corbin.” The other squad sergeant’s voice was strained, like he was gritting his teeth from pain while he shouted to make himself heard over the cacophony of fire that roared in the background. “We’re pinned down in the entryway. The lieutenant’s down. We’re being swarmed by combat forms, including some we haven’t seen before, with heavy weapons.” If he said something else in the immediately following moment, it was drowned out by another burst of fire. “…can’t get to the rendezvous.” Another hammering series of impacts, and when Corbin’s voice came back again, it sounded weaker. He was clearly wounded. “Losing ground. Heavy weapons are chewing us to pieces. Death comes.”

The comms went silent, though the gunfire continued in the distance, reverberating through the structure.

Bannon slowed to think for only a few seconds. The massive resistance at the main entrance must explain the weak defense of the rest of the installation. If the assault force was being mauled that badly, then it was unlikely that his own reduced squad would be able to reach them in time. Even if they did…

He had a sudden mental image of getting to the remnant of Second Squad, only to be overwhelmed in the upper levels of the dome by wave upon wave of combat robots.

The robots.

There had to be an override. The Ka weren’t so stupid that they didn’t have a way to control their own bots. That had been determined early on.

He made his decision, pivoted toward one of the openings leading deeper into the structure, and pointed. Without a word, the squad followed, turning and plunging into the labyrinth of hallways.

If he hadn’t had a compass readout projected on the top of his visor, he might have gotten lost almost immediately. The passages around the periphery of the dome were not intended for living Ka, so they were unlit and almost all identical at first glance. Even with the compass, he feared it was going to take entirely too long to negotiate the maze and find their way to the center, but they had no choice.

As they moved, they passed more of the unarmed robots, none of which seemed to notice them. The Ka’s arrogance was working against them once again. They hadn’t bothered to program these machines to be alert, and as a result the Corvanites were now deep inside the enemy’s lair without the Ka having any idea they were there.

If Bannon could only move a little faster, he might be able to end this in time to save some of their comrades.

He realized that this thought wasn’t all that common among Corvanite leadership. The mission was everything. Death comes. The good Corvanite must go and meet it. If First Squad was holding the enemy’s attention, then that had become their role. If that meant they held and died in place, so be it.

Yet Lieutenant Hatton’s words echoed in his mind. There were other ways to lead. The phalanx had been through a lot together since they’d made planetfall, and he didn’t want to lose any more.

Abruptly, almost shockingly, he and his squad found themselves in a brightly lit hallway, slightly larger than the tunnels they’d been crouching through thus far. The night vision in Bannon’s helmet dimmed and went out, no longer necessary.

They were in the Ka’s section of the installation now.

A quick check of distance and direction, and he thought he knew where they were. “Hern. Take Lewiski and Summ. Go left, clear as you go. I’m pretty sure that we’re still two levels below the command center, but there should be at least three entrances once you get up there. Take the first one you come to.” They’d had enough time on the planet to see just how similar all the Ka’s architecture was. That was what happened when you left all your construction to machines. “I’ll take Baddlet, Trent, and Alexius, and we’ll hit the command center from the next entrance to the right.” That should minimize any chance of friendly fire, even while hitting from two directions.

Presuming the Ka fought back. They probably wouldn’t, though they’d presumably still have sentry robots on the doors. The ratslugs knew they were under attack, and they certainly wouldn’t risk their precious fur if they could help it.

He got a quick nod from Hern. “You heard the sergeant. On me.” The taciturn corporal turned and led the way around the curve, moving in as much of a tactical glide as he could manage in a hardsuit, theo ther two troopers following, Summ pausing right at the curve to turn and check behind them, just in case any combat forms had followed them quietly through the darkened tunnels.

It wasn’t likely. The combat forms weren’t that cunning. But good tactics were good tactics.

With Trent bringing up the rear, Bannon headed in the opposite direction. The hallway didn’t seem to have many doors leading off it, which was a good thing to his way of thinking. Fewer rooms to clear, fewer places to get bogged down.

The thunder of gunfire had died down somewhat, but not completely. Someone was still in the fight down there. He unconsciously sped up, willing himself to finish this while there were still members of Third Phalanx left alive.

His element found the next set of ramps leading up—the Ka didn’t like stairs, either—and they quickly climbed toward the level where Bannon suspected the command center had to be. Those hallways were empty as well, though he could hear boots around the curve of the tunnel as Hern and his element reached the same floor.

The first two doors were on the right, toward the outer part of the dome, and Trent cleared the rooms quickly, spraying them down with short, savage bursts of autofire. They turned out to be empty, though they were clearly Ka nesting rooms. Bannon guessed that all the Ka on the installation had withdrawn to the central command center.

They continued until an intersection opened up ahead. Bannon slowed, knowing that this could get tricky, and drifted to one wall, while Alexius moved to the other, their muzzles shifting to cover the opposite opening. The sounds of battle were louder here, echoing up the passage that led out and down, toward the north side and the main entrance. That meant they had to be doubly careful, in case the Kare called some of their combat robots when they felt threatened.

“Trent. On the entryway.” Bannon pointed their autogunner toward Alexius’s position. That massive, high-rate-of-fire weapon was useful for clearing rooms where they didn’t care who lived or died, but it would be even more useful covering their backs. “The rest, on me.”

He turned toward the upward-sloping hall leading left, a short passage that ended at a blank metal door, as Trent braced his CAG-47on the corner.

Bannon led the way, keeping his weapon up even though there was no obvious place where the Ka’s automatons could pop out. The brick was almost seamless, the vitrified surface just textured enough to be not too slick to walk on.

That didn’t mean there weren’t hidden hatches. Bannon just doubted the Ka were inventive enough to program their machines to make them.

“Cutting charges.” He held out a hand. Every man in the phalanx was carrying them, just in case. Alexius slapped a rolled strip of shaped explosives into his palm, and Bannon unwound it and slapped the charge in a rough rectangle in the center of the door. A touch of a thumb to the detonator strip, and then he turned his back, bracing himself, hardsuit or no hardsuit.

He’d had to do the breacher course without. He knew what was coming.

The backblast wasn’t actually all that bad, thanks to the shaped nature of the charge. It still slapped the hallway with a catastrophic crack as the plasma generated by the explosion ripped through the metal door and flung the torn-out section deep into the command center.

The edges of the hole were still smoking as Bannon bulled his way through. There was only room for one man in the breach, so he went first, feeling the impacts of half a dozen flechettes to his chestplate as he moved, sidestepping almost immediately to return fire. The section of twisted and scorched metal that had been blasted into the room had slammed into one of the hulking sentry robots that had been stationed around the room, covering the entrances. There was no fire coming from that automaton; it was still trying to extricate itself from the wreckage of the door, as was a second one, which had just been hit by a chunk of the other door, where Hern had just made entry. The third machine, though, had pivoted and opened fire on both entry teams at once, its twin flechette launchers swiveling rapidly between them as it spewed metal needles across the room.

Bannon moved around the nearest bot, the one he’d hit with the door—he didn’t dare go too far lest it free itself from the wreckage, though the blow did seem to have caused some damage—and fired at the active sentry bot, trying to get a shot at its central processor. But there was armor plating over it, and while the rounds blew pits in the metal, they didn’t penetrate.

The closer bot was moving now, prying the wreckage away. While Alexius and Summ spread out, taking the far machine under fire, trying to hit anything vulnerable, Bannon reached back and pulled out his own cutting charge, even as the sentry he was taking cover behind managed to twist around enough to free itself from the remains of the door.

Bannon didn’t bother to unwind it. He just reached up past the bot’s stumpy metal legs, slapped it against the double flechette launcher, hit the detonator tab, and then threw himself toward the wall, hoping his hardsuit would again absorb the brunt of the blast to come.

The charge went off with a terrific concussion, the flash momentarily forcing his visor to darken. It had obliterated the flechette launcher and actually drove the machine to its figurative knees. Its chassis sagged toward the floor, smoke and sparks spitting from its twisted wreckage.

It was out of the fight. He hoped.

A ripple of explosions rocked the control center, and smoke, fire, and fragmentation whickered around the room as the thunderous reports vibrated through Bannon’s armor. Hern was working his grenade launcher as fast as he could, and he was knocking the active sentry robot around, though even the explosives didn’t seem to be getting through that armor.

Then, as Hern went to reload, the flechette fire slowed for a moment by the concussions of the grenade detonations, Alexius dashed forward, stuck his rifle’s muzzle into a gap in the bot’s armor plating, and emptied the magazine.

From any normal distance or angle, that spot would have been well protected. But the Ka had not been able to anticipate a man so unafraid of death that he would get that close to one of their heavily armed and armored sentry robots. More sparks and smoke flew as the machine froze, motionless, its central processor obliterated.

A deafening crack sounded through the room as Lewiski replicated Bannon’s strategy with the cutting charge on the final robot.

Smoke now drifted through the control room, and Bannon and Baddlet stalked toward the central platform where a dozen Ka huddled, their robes mostly concealing their soft, slightly humpbacked bodies, their pointed snouts quivering, their long, spidery hands shaking over their small round ears.

“Shut down all the machines in the facility.” Bannon’s helmet and breather mask translated his Anglic into the Ka’s chirping language. Developing that function had taken two months longer than it should have, despite the fact that the explorer ship had compiled enough Ka transmissions to have a workable language model long before the expedition had arrived in the system. “Now.”

His harsh, rasping voice, the faceless mask of his breather, and the six leveled rifles had the desired effect. With more chirps, one of the Ka hastily typed out a set of commands on a small plate, and a moment later the distant thunder of gunfire died away.

“Shall we finish this, Sergeant?” Alexius was staring down at theKa.

“Not yet.” Bannon motioned with his muzzle for the Ka to come forward. “This mission was supposed to send a message. They are going to be the message.” He keyed his comm. “This is Sergeant Bannon to the Thunderer. Mission accomplished, request medevac and extraction.”

***

The screen showed the platform in the center of Ut-Os, where the captured Ka Committee stood surrounded by Corvanite combat tracks, awaiting their sentence. The arrogance—visible even to human eyes—was gone, replaced by nothing but fear. Fear that was echoed among the furred aliens that had been herded out to witness what was about to happen.

“Your people attacked ours without provocation, then proceeded to hide behind machines and lies for nearly a year. That ends now.” Commander Fox stood atop one of the Chariot combat crawlers, in his hardsuit, the armor projecting his voice across the square. “We can track your machines back to you now. As this Committee has learned. They sent automatons to kill twenty of my men. They will send no more.”

He lifted a hand. The burst of autogun fire tore the Ka Committee apart. It was far messier than the combat tracks’ lasers would have been, but that was part of the point.

“I doubt we will have any more issues with the Ka.” Captain Haarot stood behind the survivors of Third Phalanx, his arms crossed.“ It will be some time before the Thunderer can depart, but once this recording makes it around the planet, there will not be a Committee left that is willing to risk sending its machines out again. Even if some of them do discover some bit of courage, they will likely be attacked by the other Committees, for fear that one Committee’s boldness will bring destruction upon all of them.”

Bannon and the other survivors had turned about as the captain had started to speak, and now they faced him respectfully. His eyes were still cold as he examined each man in turn.

“Your comrades went to meet death with the dignity and courage of true Corvanites,” the captain said. “You accomplished the mission. Yet Third Phalanx is now so badly mauled that it will need to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

His icy eyes settled on Bannon. “You distinguished yourself well,Sergeant Bannon. You will be the new lieutenant for Third Phalanx. The training course will have to wait until we are underway to the wormhole emergence point again, as will the arrival of your replacements, but you are now in command of Third Phalanx.

“Make me proud. Death comes!”

The phalanx, now reduced to only about a squad in strength, still made their voices reverberate off the bulkheads. “Let us go and meet it!”