March of War Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Bennett R. Coles and Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dramatis Personae

  Glossary

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ALSO BY BENNETT R. COLES AND

  AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  Virtues of War

  Ghosts of War

  March Of War

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783294275

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781783294282

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: October 2017

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Bennett R. Coles. All Rights Reserved.

  Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  TO MY MUM

  AND TO ALL MOTHERS WHO HAVE WATCHED THEIR CHILDREN

  GO OFF TO WAR

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  ASTRAL SPECIAL FORCES PERSONNEL

  Brigadier Alexander Korolev (head of Astral Special Forces)

  Katja Emmes

  Suleiman Chang

  Ali al-Jamil

  Shin Mun-Hee

  ADMIRAL BOWEN CREW MEMBERS

  Commander Hu (captain)

  Lieutenant Perry (executive officer)

  Lieutenant Gillgren (combat officer)

  Lieutenant Jack Mallory (Hawk pilot)

  Lieutenant John Micah (anti-stealth warfare director)

  Sublieutenant Thomas Kane (strike officer)

  Sublieutenant Wi Chen

  Sublieutenant Hayley Oaks

  Master Rating Daisy Singh

  OTHER PERSONNEL

  Admiral Eric Chandler

  Commander Sean Duncan

  Valeria Moretti (covert Centauri agent)

  Vijay Shah (Minister of Natural Resources, Progressive Party)

  Charity Shah (Vijay Shah’s wife)

  Christopher Sheridan (leader of the Federalist Party)

  GLOSSARY

  AAR

  anti-armor robot

  AAW

  anti-attack warfare

  AF

  Astral Force

  AG

  artificial gravity

  APR

  anti-personnel robot

  CO

  commanding officer (or captain)

  FAC

  fast-attack craft

  XO

  executive officer

  OFFICER TRADES

  Line officer

  in charge of the general operations of the Astral Force warships, this trade is exclusive to the Fleet

  Strike officer

  commanding AF ground operations, this trade is exclusive to the Corps

  Pilot officer

  operators of the Astral Force small craft, this trade exists in both Fleet and Corps, depending on the craft being piloted

  Support officer

  divided into three distinct sub-trades—Supply, Engineering, and Intelligence—this trade fulfills the Astral Force non-combat roles for both Fleet and Corps

  EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL

  Brane

  a region of spacetime which consists of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension; humans exist in one of several known branes

  Bulk

  an area of spacetime which consists of FOUR spatial dimensions and one time dimension

  Peet

  the unit of measurement to describe how far away into the fourth dimension something is from the brane in which humans exist

  SHIPBOARD

  Aft

  toward the back of the ship

  Bow

  front of the ship

  Bridge

  the command center of the ship

  Bulkhead

  wall

  Deck

  floor

  Deckhead

  ceiling

  Forward

  toward the front of the ship

  Flats

  corridor

  Frame

  an air-tight bulkhead which divides one section of the ship from another

  Galley

  kitchen

  Hatch

  a permanent access point built into a deck (as opposed to a door which is built into a bulkhead)

  Heads

  toilet

  Ladder

  a steep stairway leading from one deck to another

  Main cave

  main cafeteria

  Passageway

  corridor

  Port

  left

  Rack

  bed; also a verb meaning to sleep

  Starboard

  right

  Stern

  back of the ship

  Washplace

  sink, shower

  1

  Burning up in the atmosphere was becoming routine. It was the crossfire that made him nervous.

  Lieutenant Jack Mallory nudged his control stick to the right. The Hawk shuddered as the thunderous vector of superheated air fought the movement. Visual reckoning was useless through the orange halo enveloping his ship and flight controls did little to warn him of the relentless exchange of firepower between the Terran warships in orbit and the rebel batteries on the surface.

  The battle for control of the Asgard system wasn’t going well, and Jack seemed to find himself at the center of these situations with an increasing frequency, which alarmed him.

  “Altitude one-seven archons,” Master Rating Singh shouted. The tactical operator was in the seat over his left shoulder. “Still on full descent!” The panic in the young woman’s voice echoed vaguely in Jack’s ears. The Hawk was dropping like a stone through the planet’s thick atmo, and he was still pushing the throttle forward.

  “Send to flight,” he ordered. “Break at archons ten to scatter delta and regroup at rally point one.”

  She repeated his command to the flight of five other Hawks descending in mad obedience, flying in wedge formation astern. They’d started their drop thirty sec
onds ago, and Jack knew the ground batteries were already starting to track them.

  “Fire control shining,” she cried. “They’re locking us up!”

  Jack held the stick steady as his altimeter flashed through ten kilometers.

  “Break formation!” he cried as he wrenched back the throttle to idle and leaned the stick forward. His stomach lurched into his throat as the Hawk dove and pounded without thrust into the wall of thickening air. On his flight display he watched as the rest of his flight fanned out and dropped their speeds, just as they fell into range of the rebel anti-aircraft weapons.

  Bolts of energy flashed ahead of him, dimly visible through the fading heat cone. The scatter had foiled the initial targeting by the ground batteries, but Jack had come under fire too many times to underestimate the abilities of his enemy. Another glance at his display showed the other Hawks vectoring outward in a classic delta pattern, and he hoped their pilots knew enough to get low.

  “Archons five,” Singh warned.

  As fire control radars locked on again, Jack did a random jink to port, changing his vector, but he kept the throttle idled and let gravity accelerate him downward. His target landing zone was only sixty seconds away at maximum thrust, but it was currently under a maelstrom of orbital bombardment, and his flight had just three safe routes in. If they didn’t adhere to the Fleet’s battlespace management plan, the rebel ground weapons would be the least of his worries.

  Not that he wasn’t scared shitless by the fifty thousand rebel troops located in the hills ahead of him, each squad carrying some kind of anti-aircraft weapon, and each of them linked into that damned Centauri uber-mind which seemed to reveal every Terran movement.

  Air resistance slowed the Hawk to hypersonic speed, and as he dropped below one kilometer he pushed the throttle forward again, watching the rolling landscape rise to meet him. The other Hawks flitted in and out of sensor reach among the mountains. They cruised at two kilometers altitude, staying below the approaching peaks but giving themselves some room for error.

  They were probably low enough to stay under the rebel tracking systems, but he didn’t want to give the enemy a chance for pot-shots at his own bird. He nudged his vessel down, feeling the rumble of ground resistance in the air beneath him.

  Ahead, he could see the rain of fire pounding away at the rebel positions that encircled the Terran base. He flashed over a ridge and scanned the wasteland of military equipment that had been the battle of New Trondheim barely a week ago. A flash to the left caught his eye, but the weapon was already falling astern. He heard Singh report it and launch countermeasures, but he kept his eyes on the mayhem coming into view ahead.

  At least twenty orbital batteries were hammering down on the rebels, but the rain of fire was countered by dozens of mobile defense guns, their energy weapons lancing upward to intercept the Terran meteor swarm. The sky crackled with explosions seen through thick smoke, and the ground was barely visible amid the mad dance of scattered light and shadows.

  “Project battlespace,” he ordered.

  A faint hologram flickered into existence, projecting onto the canopy as an overlay to the world before him. Rally point one glowed as a beacon off the starboard bow. Beyond it was the narrow corridor of extraction route one, straight through the maelstrom. In his peripheral he noted the symbols of his flight of Hawks as they emerged from the hills and converged, local anti-aircraft fire trailing their hypersonic passages.

  “Time to corridor sweep?”

  “Sixteen seconds.”

  “Send to flight,” he said, leaning his stick to the right and lining up on rally point one. “Formation alpha—execute.”

  Singh relayed the order and the vectors of the Hawks changed as they altered to close him. Holding his own course steady put him at the greatest risk, out here on the open plain, but for these few seconds he needed to give his flight a target toward which to steer. The glowing hologram of rally point one loomed ahead of him, and beyond that the desperate rebel ground defenses countered the bombardment.

  As he flashed through rally point one and nudged left to aim at the extraction corridor, Jack saw a sudden dimming of the sky as all orbital bombardment momentarily ceased. An eerie calm settled over the battlefield, but Jack knew what was coming next. His flight remained in formation behind him, single file, extraction corridor entry ten seconds away. He kept his eyes down, away from the sky.

  The curtain of fire that suddenly burned down from orbit was brighter than Asgard itself. This was no new super weapon attacking the rebels—just the concentrated, coordinated fire of every orbital battery, all at once, all targeting the extraction corridor ahead of him.

  For nine long seconds the Terran weapons slammed into a single line of rebel forces, overwhelming any defenses and smashing any exposed positions. Jack didn’t slow his approach, aiming directly for the center of the fire.

  A second before he entered the corridor, the focused bombardment ceased. The Hawk bucked as it slammed into the furnace of tortured air. He eased upward just enough to clear the thick smoke. His passage cut a wake through the debris that from orbit would look like God’s finger pointing at his position, but the rebels below him—those still alive—would spend the next few minutes digging themselves out. By the time they succeeded, he and his flight would be long gone.

  They were through the main rebel line. Ahead of him he could see the blackened, smoking remains of a Terran base. Eyes narrowing, he pushed the throttle forward even more. There were troopers in those remains, and it was his job to get them out.

  * * *

  “There’s no way out!”

  Behind his visor, Sublieutenant Thomas Kane winced at the distant words of Sergeant Bunyasiriphant, his senior surviving soldier, as she clambered back toward him. Smoke was filling the half-collapsed hallway too quickly, and there was no time to try to dig or blast through the blockage.

  Escape through the hangar wasn’t an option.

  “Get back down here,” he barked at Buns—as the sergeant was known—before turning back to the rest of his “troop.” A motley gang of Terrans, but they were alive, for the moment, and they were his fighting force. More important, they were his responsibility. He checked his forearm display, scrolling through the internal structure of the base. He needed an area large enough for the Hawks to land, but one which wasn’t yet controlled by the advancing rebels.

  One of the section weapons thudded to life. His rifle snapped up even as he crouched and moved forward, pushing past the wounded and the terrified civilians. He heard Buns scrambling to follow him.

  Trooper Furmek was on the section weapon. She leaned over a mound of collapsed wall and loosed another short burst of heavy rounds as Thomas approached. Through the constant ringing in his ears he heard the ripple of destruction as the explosive rounds hit their distant marks. He crouched next to Furmek, glancing around the wall into the wreckage of what had been the main control center.

  “Another probe,” she growled, eyes not wavering from her scan outward. “I discouraged them.”

  “Another milly?”

  “Nope, just humans.”

  The millies had been chewing up Terran troopers of late. Their official designation was UCR—urban combat robot, or something—but they looked for all the worlds like mechanical millipedes, and Thomas hadn’t ever heard one called anything but a milly. War simplified things. He remembered once upon a time when the primary rebel infantry robot had actually been called an APR, rather than an “appy,” and the flying “airy” had been referred to by its official designation of AAR.

  Thomas glanced out again. No movement among the debris. He checked his map, reorienting himself. This was a big establishment, designed to be the planetary headquarters both for the Terran campaign here on Thor and for the Asgard system in general. Too bad the rebels had found it before it had been garrisoned properly.

  Fucking Army.

  The hallway to his left headed toward the workshops and some storage bays.
Not much there. He scanned the tactical center again. Furmek might have forced the rebels to duck their heads down, but there was no way he could get this group of wounded and civilians across that large an open space.

  “Sir.” Trooper McDonald tapped his shoulder, still pressing one hand over an ear. “Fleet says the extraction force is on final approach. Request our location for pickup.”

  Thomas scanned his display. The Hawks would be coming under heavy fire—he couldn’t leave them loitering. All he needed was a flat space they could access. He scrolled up through the base diagram… The roof. It was dangerously exposed, but it was open and flat. He traced back the path from one of the rooftop guard posts, and saw that the stairs that led upward were only twenty meters away.

  “Tell them we’ll be on the roof, near guard post seven,” he said, before tapping Furmek’s armored shoulder. “We’re going to move the group across this opening and back into the hallway, heading for the first set of stairs. We’re going all the way to the top.”

  Furmek flexed her grip on the trigger. “I got you covered, skipper.”

  Thomas edged back and motioned for the group to rise. There were five troopers still in fighting form, and four others being carried between the six civilians.

  “Hawks are inbound—we’re heading for the roof. O’Hara, Unrau, and I will lead. Stay close.” He hefted his rifle again and nodded to Furmek.

  She opened up with the section weapon, pounding the far side of the tactical center with sweeps of explosive rounds.

  Thomas dashed across the exposed opening where part of the wall had collapsed, eyes already on the dim hallway which angled off to the left. Emergency lamps cast narrow arcs of light through the thin, drifting smoke—enough to see by in natural vision as Thomas loped forward, rifle up at his eyeline.

  At the junction to the wide stairwell he paused, fist held up to signal a stop. Still behind the corner he activated the infra-red in his visor, scanning through the wall and up to the next floor. No heat signatures. He motioned his team forward and rounded the corner, rifle sweeping up the stairs.