Am I stubborn? Tenacious? Dedicated? Pigheaded? How can words that are virtually synonymous mean such different things in practice? How can the same trait be both positive and negative? Is it degree? Context? Or is it something we assign later, after we see if the actions in question lead to success or failure? A tenacious general holds out, standing in the breach, saving the battle. A pigheaded commander gets his soldiers slaughtered because he refuses to retreat from that same position.
Tony Black is my best friend. Was my best friend, at least. For more than a decade we stood together on the burning sands of Gehenna, battling against an enemy we were both sure was evil. We ate together, marched together, shit together. We backed each other up in every way possible. He saved my life more than once, as I saved his.
He swore the same oath I did, to fight our way back to Earth and destroy UNGov, to free a world. How can two men, closer than brothers, see the same thing so differently? I feel the urgent, elemental need to destroy anything that stands in our way, to leave no force behind us, no survivors among those who challenge our Crusade and stand with our enemies. That doesn’t mean I don’t ache for the men lost, the victims of the Crusade. Later, when I have time, I will cry for them. But the Crusade is bigger than any of us, more important than any life, than any thousand lives, or ten thousand. If we succeed, we will free billions. Is there a cost too high to pay for that?
Now, there is yet another reason we must push forward. There is more at stake than just freedom. There is the survival of the human race, and the Tegeri as well. And other beings on planets far away. Tony doesn’t know about the Darkness. I chose not to tell him, not to burden him with another weight. He doesn’t understand the urgency as I do, the need to finish this fight as soon as possible, to press on to Earth and liberate mankind. To rally them to face a new danger. UNGov made the Tegeri into a false menace, a fraud to scare humanity into yielding to their rule. But now there is a real threat, one far graver even than we’d thought the Tegeri to be. We must have a world united, by free will rather than lies and totalitarian brutality, all mankind standing as one, fighting alongside the Tegeri against the greatest evil in the universe.
I want to tell my friend, to unload my burdens, even if only for a few minutes. I want to say to him I am not the monster he thinks I’ve become, that I feel the pain and death my soldiers face as acutely as I ever did. But I can’t, I won’t. It will do nothing but ease my own pain, and that is not a good enough reason. It is my place to endure, to be the pillar that supports this Crusade. I will not give my friend yet another load to carry. If the price of protecting him is his anger, even his hatred, so be it. I love Tony Black like a brother, and I will protect him any way I can. Whether he knows it or not.
“General, the enemy is advancing on all fronts.” Black’s voice was cold and efficient. Taylor had noticed the new formality in his exec’s speech, “generals” and “sirs” replacing “Jakes” as he reported. “Major Samuels and Major Young are both falling back under heavy attack.”
There had been communiques all morning, but now the data was becoming clear. There were thousands of enemy soldiers, apparently fresh formations, plunging into Taylor’s exhausted and battered men.
What is this, Taylor thought, what the hell is going on? He’d hoped his troops’ ceaseless attacks had broken the enemy’s morale and shattered the combat effectiveness of their formations. For days his forces had pursued broken units, driving toward the Portal, the enemy’s link to Earth and their source of supply and communications.
Perhaps this was their last reserve, he thought, a final desperate attempt to stave off defeat. If so, all his people had to do was hold on until the attack spent itself. But he had no idea what reinforcements were coming through the Portal, how many fresh units the enemy still had. He reminded himself his adversaries had all the resources of Earth behind them. If enough reserves were moving through the Portal, it wouldn’t matter what his people did. They’d be overwhelmed eventually. That is why he’d been pushing so hard to crush the enemy lines and reach the Portal. As long as the enemy could bring in fresh troops and supplies, there was no hope of victory.
He looked at his oldest friend and second-in-command. He was hurt by Black’s coolness, troubled by their quarrel. But he didn’t have time for that, not now. The enemy counter-attack was unexpected, and it was a problem, maybe a big one. If there was enough force behind it, his army was in dire peril.
“We’re going to have to burn the rest of our drones.” Taylor’s voice was somber, emotionless. “There’s no choice. Launch a triple spread. That should just about clean out our stocks.” He hated using the last of his recon drones, but there was no other option. He had to know how many troops the enemy was moving forward. He needed to know if it was just a diversion, or if they still had enough strength left to seriously threaten his battered army.
“Yes, sir.” Black saluted crisply. “I will see to it now.” He spun around on his heels and headed toward the communications tent.
Taylor almost called him back, but he stopped himself. There would be time enough to talk to Black, to mend fences, when the battle was over.
“All units, maintain position and keep firing.” Young was shouting into the com. His hands were balled into fists, and his face was twisted in a determined grimace. He wasn’t going to fall back any farther. Not a centimeter. Not if he had to nail his people to this ridge by will alone. “All platoons, detach a detail to strip the dead and wounded.” Ammo was becoming a problem. It wasn’t critical yet, but Young wasn’t about to let it get there.
The enemy had counter-attacked three days before, and they’d been coming on nonstop ever since. He’d thought they were broken, but now they were getting new strength from somewhere. There were enhanced troops leading the attacks, but they were supported by thousands of regular soldiers, far more than he could account to UN Force Juno alone. Clearly, UNGov was pouring more troops through the Portal.
His people had almost made it; they’d almost broken through to make a move against the Portal. If they’d have gotten there, the enemy would have been cut off from all their supplies and reinforcements. It wasn’t hard to defend a Portal entrance…one machine gun nest would do it, at least for a while. No more than two men abreast could come through at a time, and they’d be disoriented when they first stepped out. But his men had fallen short of reaching the Portal. The enemy had managed to rush enough reserves through to seize the initiative and counter-attack, pushing Young’s forces back along with the entire Army of Liberation.
His men were exhausted. They’d suffered massive casualties and, even with the reinforcements Taylor had pushed forward, he commanded barely half as many men as he had ten days before. He’d launched the operation with a force that consisted entirely of enhanced Supersoldiers, but now half his men were unmodified planetary regulars thrown into the line as last-ditch reserves. They weren’t anything close to a match for enhanced troopers, but the enemy forces were also mixed now. The brutal fighting had cost both sides many of their elite soldiers, and they were throwing anyone who could carry a rifle into the maelstrom.
Young watched as the enemy surged forward again. They’d charged three times already; this would be the fourth. They were mostly regulars coming now, the Supersoldiers deployed in small teams to stiffen the line. He stared for a few seconds as his enhanced eyes focused on the attackers, climbing over the bodies of their comrades to push forward. Enhanced or not, Young couldn’t help but admire the courage of the men approaching his line. Such valor, he thought…has such courage ever been wasted for such a terrible cause before?
His men were raking the attackers’ line, dozens falling, hundreds. He had his unmodified troopers in the front line trench, but his snipers and handpicked crack shots from his Supersoldier units were deployed among them. The rest of his enhanced soldiers, the survivors of the original two battalions he’d led forward, were organized as a reaction force, ready to counterattack anywhere the enemy broke through.
He stared out at the field. There were thousands of men coming at his line. His people were outnumbered at least 10-1. He didn’t know where the enemy was getting so many troops, but he was beginning to realize there was no way his men could hold. Not against so many.
He heard a sound coming up from behind…gunships approaching. An instant later, his com crackled to life. “Major Young, this is Major MacArthur. I’ve got close air support inbound to your position. Prepare for FAE runs.”
“Acknowledged, Major. And boy are you a sight for sore eyes.” He flipped the com to the forcewide frequency. “Alright boys, grab some dirt. We’ve got friendly Dragonfires inbound!”
Macarthur’s hand gripped the throttle as he veered his craft down toward the advancing enemy formations. The strike force was following him in, three ships total, the battered remnants of AOL’s once powerful air command.
The fighting had been no less brutal in the air than on the ground, the opposing gunships tearing into each other, struggling with the last of their strength and ordnance to gain superiority in the sky.
Neither side had managed to achieve that, MacArthur thought grimly as he arced his craft downward in a sharp dive. They’d come close to mutual extermination instead. MacArthur’s three birds were just about all the AOL had left, except for a few semi-wrecks the technicians were trying to get back in the air with a combination of recycled parts and good hopes.
He mourned all the men he’d lost, but there was pride there too, admiration for the way his outnumbered forces had grimly held their own. They’d knocked just about every enemy bird from the sky and, while he couldn’t call his three remaining ships air superiority, he was proud of the near 2-1 kill ratio his people had achieved.
There hadn’t been an airstrike from either side in three days, not until Taylor ordered MacArthur and his survivors take off and support Young’s overwhelmed command. MacArthur knew the situation on the ground was desperate. He also realized this was going to be just about the last sortie for his forces. Even if his three birds made it through the AA fire and returned undamaged, they were loaded up with the last of the FAEs. They might manage one more mission with nothing but auto-cannon rounds, but then they’d completely out of ammo and grounded for the duration.
MacArthur had declared victory in the air war, at least in his own deepest thoughts. It was the only way he could reconcile with the losses. But he knew that success was only temporary. He had no more gunships and no way to get any. His birds were out of ammunition and spare parts. The Earth forces would get more of everything – ships, ammo, replacement parts - and probably soon. It would take a while to get new birds through the Portal and reassemble them, but he knew his last few ships would eventually be hunted down and destroyed. It might be a week, or two. Maybe even a month. But it would happen. And then the air would belong to the enemy. And Taylor’s people on the ground would be in a worse holocaust than they were now.
MacArthur’s eyes were fixed forward as his gunship streaked down toward the advancing enemy troops. He’d caught them cold, out in the open in a deep formation. Three ships was a small force, but he knew they would make their attack count. Maybe, just maybe, they could help the outnumbered guys on the ground win one more round.
He angled his ship, streaking toward the main enemy concentration. “Blue two, to the left. Blue three, to the right.” He pushed the throttle forward, diving lower, positioning for his attack run. His two other ships pushed out to his flanks, the three Dragonfires forming in a perfect line as they made their final approach.
Three, two, one…MacArthur counted down in his head before he pulled the release. He could feel the slight bumps as his craft released the FAE canisters one after the other. He knew the other birds were keying off his release. His ersatz squadron was dropping a cloud of flaming death, 150 meters wide and over a kilometer long. For a few minutes, the ground below would become like a vision of hell. Men would be consumed by the fires, their bodies nearly vaporizing in the intense heat. Others would die from the low pressure at the center of the firestorms, their lungs torn apart as they gasped for breath.
It was a horrible death his ships brought the hapless infantry on the ground, the same nightmare the enemy aircraft had visited on the AOL’s units. MacArthur felt a touch of regret, a small wave of guilt. He knew the men down there were not evil, at least not most of them. Not like he’d believed the Machines to be for so many years. They were conscripts, fighting because they had no choice. But war was war, and the sin of it all would be that much worse if Taylor’s army lost. There was hope in the victory of the AOL, a chance all the suffering and death might lead to something positive. MacArthur and Taylor had never gotten along on Erastus, not until the very end. But the air commander had come to realize the heavy burden Taylor had taken on, and he was determined to support the cause…even if his last bird was grounded. Even if he had to pick up a rifle and jump into the line.
He looked at the screen, seeing the inferno on the ground below. The belly cameras on his ship gave him a tremendous view. His three ships had torn a 1,200 meter swath of utter destruction through the enemy ranks. Maybe, he thought, maybe that will be enough to save those guys on the ground.
“Alright, guys, let’s get back home.” He pulled back on the throttle, climbing hard, angling back toward base. An instant later the alarm sounded – incoming ground-to-air missiles. He jerked hard on the throttle, whipping the ship around in a wild evasive maneuver. MacArthur was the commander of AOL’s air wing, a veteran pilot with more than a decade of combat experience. He wasn’t about to let some random shot from a handheld launcher take him down. He was still thinking that when the rocket slammed into his ship, and it erupted into a roiling fireball, it’s flaming remnants crashing hard to the ground.
Ralfieri pushed the headphone tightly against his ear. He’d listened to the recording twice already, but that didn’t stop him from hitting play again. So that’s what the dread Jake Taylor sounds like, he thought. But it wasn’t Taylor’s voice that made Ralfieri feel like he’d been gut-punched. It was what the man was saying.
The voice on the recording didn’t sound like the psychopathic monster Ralfieri had been led to expect. Not even close. Taylor was almost pleading, a desperation obvious in his tone. It couldn’t have been fear; Taylor’s Supersoldiers could have easily crushed the unreinforced UN Force Juno they’d been facing when the transmission was made. No, it was a man beseeching his enemy not to fight, begging them not to make him kill them all.
Ralfieri had been troubled almost since the time he’d emerged through the Portal and taken command of the UN forces on Juno. It was little things, mostly…and a few big ones too. Nothing quite added up; nothing made sense. Now he was asking himself the core question at the heart of the matter. Was Taylor truly a villain, a madman rampaging across the Portal worlds massacring UN soldiers? Or was there more to it than that? Were Ralfieri and his men fighting on the wrong side?
“You say Taylor gave this speech before the fighting started?”
“Yes, sir. His people came through their Portal, but they didn’t advance on us immediately.” Captain Akawa spoke softly, his tones hushed despite the fact that he and Ralfieri were alone. “A lot of us believed him. His delay in attacking benefitted us, not them. We were talking about taking his offer when…”
“When?” Ralfieri had been looking out over the rocky ground, but now he turned to face Akawa. “When what?”
Akawa hesitated a few seconds. “Well, sir…it’s…”
“Speak freely.” Ralfieri could see the officer was uncomfortable. “Please, Captain.”
“Well, sir, while we were discussing our options, we were called to an assembly. A number of men, mostly the ones who had been positioned on point and closer to Taylor’s forces, tried to desert.” He paused, swallowing hard. “Inquisitor Vanderberg’s men captured many of them before they were able to make their escape. He…”
Ralfieri put his hand on Akawa’s shoulder. “It’s OK, Captain. Please go on.”
“Sir, Inquisitor Vanderberg assembled the entire unit to watch while he…” Akawa paused again, taking a deep breath before he continued. “…while he had them shot, sir.” Another pause. “He had them all shot, General, and the rest of the men in their units too, whether they had deserted or not.”
Ralfieri felt the rage begin to boil over. He hated Vanderberg. He wanted to kill the miserable, arrogant butcher more than he’d ever wanted anything. He’d been close the day the Inquisitor had ordered the fleeing troops gunned down, but Anan Keita had gotten there in time to break up the conflict before it got too far. Ralfieri didn’t think much of Keita either, but even his anger didn’t blind him to the consequences of disobeying a member of the Secretariat. He’d backed down, reluctantly, angrily. Keita had managed to keep him away from Vanderberg since.
“How did Taylor get his message through? I’m surprised the army commander didn’t jam the transmission.” Ralfieri was indulging his curiosity, trying to control his anger as he did.
“I don’t know, sir. He was just able to transmit on our frequencies, somehow. As far as I know, every man in Force Juno heard the message.”
Ralfieri looked down at the ground, thinking. There was more to the situation than what he’d been told. Much more.
He pulled out his com unit. “Major Evans, assemble a section immediately and report to me at the coordinates I transmit to you.”
“Yes, sir.” Evans’ response was immediate. The officer was a reliable veteran and the man Ralfieri had come to trust the most.
“And this is a classified mission, Major, so you are to tell no one about it. Just pick your section and meet me at the coordinates.”
“Yes, General.” Ralfieri couldn’t detect any confusion or concern over his cryptic orders in his subordinate’s tone. “I will confirm when we are en route.”
“Very well, Major. Ralfieri out.” He turned toward Akawa. “Want to join us, Captain?”
“Where are you going, sir?”
Ralfieri paused for an instant. “I’m going to see General Taylor, Captain. I’m going to find out what the hell is really going on here.”