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  Popping open her faceplate, she spoke. “Flight Lieutenant Carla Engels. Fleet.”

  “Sergeant Banden Heiser, Helios Home Guard, ma’am,” said the squad leader, a huge, hulking man. “We spotted your ejection. We’ll try to get you on a transport.”

  “Transport where?”

  “Evacuating the city. We’re spreading out into the countryside for survivability—at least until the city can be secured again.”

  “Do you need a pilot? Or a driver? I’m rated on ground vehicles too.”

  “Don’t know, ma’am. You can ask the logistics people. We’re supposed to keep the traffic flowing.”

  “Give me a second.” Engels shrugged out of her survival suit. It was thirty kilos she didn’t need on a fully terraformed planet. She kept her headset, comlink amplifier, sidearm, and the detachable essentials pack. “All right, Sergeant. Lead on.”

  The four soldiers led her to the nearest bridge where a long line of vehicles sped across. Pedestrians walked along both sides of the road. Bicycles and scooters wove between.

  Heiser shrugged apologetically. “I can’t stop a vehicle. They have to keep moving. You’ll need to walk until there’s a slowdown and you get a chance to hop on.”

  Engels stared with longing back toward the city. Straker was fighting there. She felt like she should be with him. “You sure nobody can use a driver, maybe a gunner?”

  Heiser’s brow furrowed. “Ma’am, we have plenty of people and lots of light arms. What we don’t have are enough heavy weapons: tanks, mobile gun systems, missile launchers. You need to go. There are Home Guard units mobilizing in the larger towns. Join one of them. I’m sure they can use you.”

  “Dammit... All right.” Engels slapped Heiser on a shoulder she could barely reach and said, “Thanks, big man. Stay low.” She turned to walk westward, joining the fleeing civilians.

  Every time she thought she had a chance to get aboard a vehicle, fate seemed to thwart her. Once, a truck roared away just as she was about to jump aboard. Other times, the occupants waved her off with angry gestures. She could see the fear in their eyes, but she didn’t understand their attitude, given her uniform.

  Perhaps they blamed the military for failing to protect them.

  So, she trudged wearily along on foot, not used to marching. Her feet soon hurt and began to develop hot spots. Flight boots were not made for walking long distances.

  Kilometers later, she found herself among a crowd stopped before a bridge. Vehicles crammed the roadway and pedestrians filled in the gaps. As this scene registered on her consciousness, panic swept the mass of people and they began running in all directions—except forward.

  Engels found herself trampled in the soft mud of the roadside, bruised and stepped on. When she picked herself up, she saw lines of Hok infantry advancing from all sides. They must have dropped behind friendly lines, seized the bridge ahead, and then deployed to surround this pocket of refugees.

  She unholstered her sidearm, staring at it in her hand. What could she do against hardened soldiers in battlesuits? This little popgun probably couldn’t even penetrate their armor. It would be a futile gesture. And she was no front-line warrior. She was a pilot, useless without something to fly.

  Putting the handgun away, she looked around for somewhere to hide. Spotting a culvert running under the road, she dropped to the ground and crawled through muddy water into the pipe.

  Something squealed and she thought of rats, or whatever occupied that ecological niche on Corinth. Ahead, she saw dark shapes and realized that others hid in here with her, also trying to avoid capture. She lay in the cold wet for a long while, smelling dirt, plants, and fear.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Hok troops rousted her and the others, threatening to shoot them where they hid. Engels didn’t want to die here in a dirty pipe, though she considered it. But where there was life, there was hope. It was her duty to resist and escape.

  Survive with honor, said the briefings.

  Placing her sidearm and its ammunition on a rock at the faint prospect some resistance fighter might one day find it, she crawled out and let herself be taken.

  Chapter 7

  The French Chasseurs, the Prussian Jaegers, and the Austrian Grenzer regiments (of the 18th century) followed the ancient Greek concept; in contrast to the rigid maneuvers of their line infantries, the light units were fast, agile, and expected to adapt their tactics to the terrain and the situation.

  -The History of Light Infantry; The 4GW Counterforce by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC.

  Planet Corinth. Helios city.

  Almost gently, Straker used his duralloy fingers to rip holes in the back of the apartment building like a man tearing open a child’s playhouse. He left as many load-bearing walls and beams as he could, wiggling in among the floors and leaving the roof intact. Overhead cover was most important right now, protection from eagle-eyed enemy destroyers and the drone network that was undoubtedly even now extending into Helios.

  Once he was completely ensconced within the blocky four-story apartment building, he peered out the largest window he could find, leaving the glass in place to help mask his signature. He could see the enemy armor and infantry regrouping at three kilometers distance. They wouldn’t move in until their aerospace forces softened things up.

  The hypervelocity antitank missiles would be ineffective at this distance. Enemy defensive systems would have too much time to react, especially with no threat or other distraction to disrupt them. All Straker and his comrades could do was wait and prepare.

  “Soon as you’re set, eat and drink,” Straker told them.

  “Don’t forget, I get the Chicken a la King!” said Loco.

  “Man, give it a rest,” said Chen, and Loco subsided.

  While he followed his own orders about eating and drinking, Straker took the time to check the overall tactical situation.

  What he saw made his gut ache. Only sixty-five mechsuiters remained, in various states of combat effectiveness. The open battle at heavy odds had taken sixty-three mechsuiters so far, a casualty rate nearing fifty percent, unprecedented in Straker’s experience. The Regiment had never been forced to make a last stand; Fleet had always come through to hold up their end.

  Maybe they would again, but Straker had to prepare for the worst.

  Those who’d made it to Helios had set up much as he had, in ambush positions along the city’s edge. Some of the friendly drone network had withdrawn with the mechsuiters, providing decent coverage above the buildings. Straker spotted planetary army and city militia missile teams deployed on rooftops. Artillery batteries could be seen dug within bermed firing pits. Robotic air defense tracks sat in parks and at major road junctions, seeking maximum visibility across the sky.

  But there were not nearly enough assets available to cover a city of so many millions. As soon as they got themselves sorted out, the Hok would grind the Hundred Worlds forces to dust. It was a simple numbers game. Despite the losses the mechsuiters had inflicted, the defenders were still outmatched two to one in ground combat power.

  If that were all, Straker would feel less pessimistic. The real crux of their bind was the Hok’s impending aerospace supremacy.

  “Review your bailout procedures,” Straker said, startling himself with his own raspy voice.

  “That’s a little premature, don’t you think, sir?” Chen replied.

  “I want you guys to be prepared to blend into the captured population. You have a duty to preserve our skills for future use.”

  “What about you, sir?” asked Chen.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Straker didn’t want to say it out loud, but he would never leave his battlesuit voluntarily. He’d fight to the last. Better that than getting hunted like a rat in the sewers.

  “How ’bout we don’t let it come to that?” Loco said. “On the other hand, I’m sure some of the local babes will be happy to see us.”

  Straker didn’t reply. He looked out of his
window, watching the battlefield slowly clear of the smoke and haze thrown up by the friendly orbital strikes. “They’ll be coming soon. Everyone’s missiles set up for external launch?”

  “Yeppers.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Straker had placed his own reload racks, which doubled as portable launchers, behind several unbroken windows. When the time came, he would fire one gatling round through each to shatter it, and then ripple-launch the missiles. The three on his back he would save for contingencies.

  “Why aren’t they coming?” Loco asked.

  “If they’ve beaten our fleet, they’re in no hurry. They can develop a coordinated attack plan in order to minimize casualties. It might be twenty minutes, it might be two hours.”

  “Or it might be now!” Loco called as the sky above them lit with streaks.

  Straker lost the drone feeds in seconds, but what little he’d seen indicated the Hok ships were using pinpoint strikes to destroy those Hundred Worlds units visible from above.

  The regulars and militia never had a chance. The only ones to survive would huddle in basements and shelters, hoping to spring point-blank ambushes as the enemy occupied the city.

  Straker wondered what had happened to Engels and her dropship. He hoped she’d been able to run for recovery and flee with whatever forces Admiral Braga had preserved.

  “Stand fast,” Straker said, thinking to steady his men. “They can’t see us, and they’re trying to minimize damage to infrastructure. Otherwise, they’d have commenced a general bombardment. Our job is to make them pay for what they’re taking, for as long as possible. We have to hold out until the relief fleet comes.”

  “What if it doesn’t?” said Chen.

  “The Hundred Worlds has interior lines and our ships are better. And remember the briefings? The dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts are already on their way in a separate fleet. That’s why we got here so fast, with the battlecruisers and lighter units.”

  “They should have stayed together.”

  “Then in stead of defending, we’d be attacking in the open, facing a dug-in enemy, trying to root them out of Helios with restrictive ROE to try to preserve our own infrastructure,” Straker replied patiently.

  “No point in crying about what-ifs,” Chen said. “Here they come.”

  “BO-fucking-HICA,” said Loco in resignation.

  They were both right. The Hok armor had shaken itself out and reformed into standard deployments, doing what it did best: frontal assault. They’d long ago learned there was no point in trying to out-finesse mechsuiters. They’d hammer away until they broke the Regiment.

  “Remember, as soon as I say so, we bug out to our fallback positions.” Straker had already chosen and marked those for his men. “Move fast, because we’ll be spotted and engaged from above.”

  Heavy tanks led the assault, behemoths of over one hundred fifty tons. These were bricks with cannon, deliberately placed out front to absorb attacks and threaten their enemies with the largest weapons, forcing the Hundred Worlders to take them out or be plowed under.

  Light tanks followed, with guns almost as large but armor that could only stop smaller weapons. A concentrated gatling burst could drill through one; a force-cannon bolt would destroy one.

  Behind and to the flanks flitted the hovers, ground-effects vehicles that relied on speed instead of armor, buzzing about the battlefield like maddened wasps. In conventional battle, these were the infantry-killers. Against mechsuiters, they added firepower and distraction.

  At the back of the battle line came the missile tracks, firing heavy guided rockets not so different from the mechsuiters’ own antitank weapons. While not as sophisticated as Hundred Worlds tech, the fire-and-forget projectiles had warheads large enough to take out a mechsuiter with a direct hit.

  Among them all, battlesuit infantry loped like miniature mechsuiters.

  Hok suits massed a ton each, with armor thick enough to fend off small arms. They provided speed and survivability to the troops, along with the strength to carry oversized weaponry. And, of course, the infantry’s traditional ability to hold any ground, any terrain. After all, no tank or track could truly occupy a building or root an enemy out of a cave.

  “We’re fighting their kind of battle,” Chen muttered. “This is stupid.”

  “We’re fighting the only battle we can right now,” Straker replied, but within himself he agreed with his pessimistic comrade. “It’ll get better once they’re inside the urban terrain.”

  “Their aerospace will tear us apart.”

  “Chen, shut up and do your job,” Loco snapped.

  “I can do one or the other, dick. Your choice. I don’t hear you cracking jokes anymore, huh?”

  Straker let them argue. Despite their bickering, they were both professionals, each with years of combat experience. Still, there was a desperate edge to the back-and-forth now, an indication that their morale was sinking.

  He waited for commands to come through his datalink and display on his battlenet. The ready prompt appeared, telling him the rest of the regiment was as prepared as he was. “Optimum range. Fire on my mark.”

  While the missiles technically could reach much farther, optimum range represented a sweet spot at about two kilometers, far enough to allow the hypervelocity weapons to acquire and guide, close enough that the enemy’s integrated defense systems had a tough time reacting to take them out.

  The prompt flashed red. “Mark!”

  Three mechsuiters fired single gatling rounds to shatter windows. Three racks of three missiles each ripple-fired from their positions. All along the edge of the city, more rockets leaped out of windows. Networked and smart, the weapons prioritized targets and deployed their own countermeasures, spinning off decoys and screaming ECM jamming pulses to fuzz enemy sensors.

  Immediately after, mechsuiters fired force-cannon bolts and gatling bursts in the direction of the oncoming enemy, not with any great expectation of striking their targets, but simply to add to the confusion. The mass launch was designed to briefly overwhelm the Hok countermeasures—just long enough to wipe out their targets.

  In response, enemy armor maneuvered wildly and fired obscurants, instantly wreathing the battlefield in metallized chemical smoke. Shotgun blasts of projectiles reached for the incoming warheads, and active armor plating extended itself temporarily on struts in the hope of intercepting missiles and detonating them before they connected.

  Hok infantry leaped high into the air and fired wildly in the general direction of the rockets, trying for lucky hits. Some of them intersected their own armored vehicles’ shotgun blasts and died.

  They were relentless, Straker had to give them that.

  The volley of eight hundred antitank missiles killed over three hundred Hok vehicles. This would have constituted a devastating blow in most battles, but clearly, the aliens had prepared themselves for such casualties. They barely slowed their advance. Fresh troops from behind overran the shattered remnants of their front lines and continued the assault.

  Straker began moving before his weapons even struck. “Fall back!” he yelled, tearing himself out of the building that sheathed him and running like a metal godling between the empty apartment blocks. Loco and Chen pounded the ground nearby, taking serpentine routes toward their fallback positions.

  From Hok ships above, orbital spikes reached for the mechsuiters at hypervelocity speeds, burning cyan tubes in the atmosphere as friction heated them. They struck the ground with ripping force, though they had no warheads. They contained enough kinetic energy to punch through ten meters of cryscrete.

  Or a mechsuiter.

  Like ballplayers, mechsuiters dodged left and right until they found cover within large buildings at their fallback positions. Some didn’t make it; Straker saw at least a dozen icons on his HUD wink out. The regimental count now stood at fifty-one.

  At this rate, we’ll be dead in an hour or two, he thought.

  Mechsuiters were simply not
designed for this kind of battle. The theory went that the urban terrain would provide enough cover, but with full orbital supremacy, the enemy could pick off the mechsuiters any time they exposed themselves.

  Unless…

  Straker switched to the command channel. “Regimental command, this is one-one-one.”

  “Command here.” The accompanying icon said he was speaking to Major Sanjinar, the XO, which meant Colonel Gormenstahl was likely out of action or dead.

  “Sir, we’re getting cut to pieces here.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Straker.”

  “We’re too big to act like infantry. We have to fight like mechsuiters, which means we must move forward, not back. Let them penetrate the city halfway, then get in among them, use all this cover and rubble. That will neutralize their overhead advantage. They won’t be able to fire for fear of hitting their own.”

  Sanjinar stayed silent for long enough that Straker checked to see the channel was still active. Eventually the major spoke again.

  “You’re right, Straker,” he said. “We have to gamble. I’ll put out the word. We’ll fall back, then ambush and press forward. We’ll turn this city into our playground.”

  “Sir, any word from Fleet?” Straker asked.

  “Seventeen hours.”

  “Yes, sir.” Straker couldn’t see any way they would hold that long, and his skepticism must have leaked through in his tone.

  “Listen,” Sanjinar said, “we have to buy time for the reinforcements to arrive. I know it seems impossible, but it’s our only hope. Command out.”

  A moment later, Straker saw new orders pushed through his datalink and onto his battlenet.

  It was time to turn this fight around.

  * * *

  The Hok battlesuit infantry separated Flight Lieutenant Engels from the civilians, speaking to everyone by employing synthesizers in their faceless helmets. It was enough to control the terrified refugees.