Terra and Imperium (Duchy of Terra Book 3) Read online

  “Corellian Plateau is coming up,” the pilot of James’s shuttle noted. “You’ll know it when you see it, trust me.”

  “You’ve flown this before?” the General asked.

  “Ha! No,” the pilot confirmed with a grin. “I don’t think anyone has, but looking at the overhead from the survey sats…damn.”

  James looked at the screens showing the mountains in front of his shuttle and understood immediately both what had shut the pilot up and just what the man had meant.

  The mountains gave way to a massive plateau, taller than many of the mountains and edged in pitch-black rock. The Corellian Plateau stretched for dozens of kilometers in every direction and was easily a kilometer high, towering above the icy plains around it.

  “Slow us down and link into the survey satellites,” James ordered as he gazed at the immense natural wonder in front of him. “Where the hell did these bastards land?”

  “If they’re even half-decently equipped, we could just swan around up here until someone fires an antiaircraft missile at us,” the pilot suggested.

  “Look to your scanners, Lieutenant,” James replied. “I’d rather find them without being shot down.”

  “Scopes are clear so far.” The Guard Captain shook his head. “How do that many shuttles just disappear?”

  “Stealth fields,” the General told him. “We know they exist, even if we have no idea how the damn things work. I wouldn’t have thought they’d work well in atmosphere, though—”

  “We’ve got something,” Captain Sommers interrupted over the radio. “I’ve got what looks like a perimeter sweep on my sensors. They’re trying to be sneaky—but they ain’t Triple-S.”

  “Neither are we anymore,” James said with a sigh. The Special Space Service attached to the United Earth Space Force had been the elite of a planet, every officer and enlisted already a proven veteran of their national military.

  Since those national militaries no longer existed, his own Ducal Guard couldn’t be as elite. Their training and prep made up much of the difference, but you couldn’t make up for using a hundred different armies as a filter.

  “Anything showing up around them?” he asked.

  “Negative,” Sommers told him. “I’m guessing they’ve still got stealth fields over their shuttles and whatever encampment they’re setting up.”

  James considered it for a moment and then made a snap decision.

  “Pass the coordinates on to all shuttles,” he ordered. “We’ll do one peeping-tom run over the area and air-drop the troops on any concentrations or encampments we find.”

  “Understood. And, sir…”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “They’re definitely Kanzi.”

  #

  Chapter 4

  James watched through the video feed from his lead shuttles as they flashed over the top of the plateau, looking for any sign of Terra’s blue-furred enemies. Stealth fields, to his understanding, blocked every form of sensor but created a distortion that could be seen by the sentient eye.

  “There!” his pilot snapped, the younger man’s eyes picking out what the General had missed. He dropped a blue caret on James’s screen, highlighting a section of movement that he’d missed.

  Like Sommers had seen before, it was a perimeter-scouting patrol, half a dozen short and delicate humanoids clad in dark gray power armor. Two points weren’t enough to necessarily draw a bead on the enemy landing site, but it was enough for him to start.

  “Alpha-Two, you see them,” James snapped. “You are go. Drop. Drop. Drop.”

  The computer running the display in his helmet was smart enough to recognize his focus and relay him updates as the Ducal Guard’s Second Platoon, Alpha Company, Centauri Battalion engaged the drop system on their shuttle. One moment, they were locked into their shuttle, blazing across the plateau at six times the speed of sound.

  The next, all fifty suits of power armor were blasted out the bottom of the spacecraft, the floor of the shuttle sliding aside barely in time for the soldiers to be fired downward.

  The A!Tol Imperium’s idea of a safe air-drop system didn’t line up with any of its member species’ idea of a comfortable system, but James couldn’t argue with its effectiveness. Alpha-Two went from airborne above the enemy to on the ground around the enemy in under six seconds.

  The ensuing firefight was over almost before it began, the Kanzi troopers down before they’d fired a shot.

  “Flag the suit locations for analysis,” James ordered. “We need to know if the tech these guys are carrying is as out of the expected parameters as the tech on the starships.”

  “Bravo-Two has another patrol,” Captain Steffen reported. “They’re dropping now.”

  “Alpha-One has dropped on the original patrol,” Sommers added. “We have three target locations.”

  “Which means we have a central point,” James agreed. “Imperial Marines, you’re with me: right into the middle!”

  “Oorah!”

  Company Commander Donald Carver had, the Guard’s commander reflected, been a United States Marine before signing on with the Imperium.

  You could put a Marine in a new uniform and have them serve an alien empire, but you couldn’t make them any less of a USMC Marine.

  #

  Ten shuttles converged like moths to a flame, flying just above the surface of the plateau to thwart any waiting antiaircraft missiles. With only a vague idea where the Kanzi might have set down, James locked himself into the drop pods with the rest of his personal detachment, ex-SSS to a man, and left the call over when to drop them to the pilot.

  Then the entire spacecraft lurched as if they’d run into a brick wall, feeling for a moment like they’d stopped in the air, and then the pilot was cursing on the channel.

  “Holy shit. Drop! Drop! Drop!”

  James didn’t even have time to pull the sensor data to see what they’d found before the shuttle fired him into the air and the entire process of falling consumed his entire attention.

  The same built-in inertial management systems that allowed the suit to take a tank round without flinching managed the acceleration, while an add-on belt of hyper-dense chemical rockets blazed to life to control his descent and deliver him to the ground intact.

  The system might be entirely automated, but the sentient still had to decide where to land, and that was when he realized just what they’d stumbled into.

  Sixteen heavy assault shuttles of an unfamiliar design had been arranged in a circle, spaced evenly apart—presumably close enough to keep their stealth fields linked together and shield the encampment—while power-armored Kanzi began to fill in the gaps with barricades and other, unarmored, aliens were setting up a series of prefab structures inside the impromptu fortification.

  If James’s people hadn’t already been on their way and tracking the shuttles, he wasn’t sure they’d have ever found the camp. Most early-stage Imperial colonies didn’t have combat shuttles, and the Centauri Battalion had them only because they’d already been assigned to the unit when it had been flagged for deployment to the new colony.

  That, it seemed, might have just saved the day. Five hundred power-armored soldiers, mostly Imperial Marines but with a hundred Terran Ducal Guards in the mix, dropped out of the sky on a half-built camp that wasn’t truly expecting them.

  The armored troops, however, were clearly very good at their jobs. Their weapons were free before James’s people had even hit the ground, and the hiss-crack of plasma weapons filled the air.

  He had a moment to be grateful that these Kanzi didn’t appear to have any super-weapons for their ground troops, and then his helmet started flagging targets as he hit the ground. His plasma rifle swung free, tracking toward the first set of armored soldiers and opening fire.

  In the back of his mind, he noted that there were fewer troops than he’d expected. The shuttles would have been enough to carry over fifteen hundred soldiers, but there were dozens—hundreds—of visible unarmored per
sonnel, presumably civilians and only about four hundred soldiers.

  Even including the unarmored Kanzi, however, there were only half the people he’d have expected. Potentially, the stealth fields took up much of the space, but it was also likely there was more gear on the spacecraft.

  The Kanzi had been planning on sticking around. James had no intention of letting them.

  “Watch your fire,” he snapped at his people. “Shit happens, but let’s not kill anyone unarmed or blow up those shuttles. I want to know what they brought here!”

  He spotted what appeared to be some kind of tripod-mounted heavy weapon with half a dozen power-armored Kanzi struggling to get it set up. He had no idea what kind of system required external support when power armor was available, but he didn’t want it opening fire on his men or the Marines.

  He flagged it to his computer and set his rifle for maximum power, then opened fire. The computer helped track his fire to make sure he was shooting at the right time and place, and on maximum power, each round hit with the impact of ninety kilograms of TNT.

  It also emptied the rifle’s internal capacitor in four shots, but the strange weapon disappeared in a ball of fire and he dodged behind one of their prefabricated barricades to let his suit recharge the weapon.

  One of the unarmored Kanzi was also behind the barricade and leveled a very human-looking pair of eyes on him. Kanzi and human body language were close enough that he could usually read them, but he had no idea what the alien in the strange burgundy uniform was thinking.

  And then the Kanzi bit down in a strange gesture that James had been trained to recognize once, long before, and spat at the General’s feet as his mouth began to foam up and his body stiffened. The apparent technician crumpled to the ground, some kind of poison pill killing him instantly.

  A horrifying realization hit home and James slammed himself into the ground.

  “Everyone, down! They’re going to blow the shuttles!”

  The Kanzi troops were outnumbered by his first wave, and he had another three hundred power-armored soldiers closing on the encampment as well. Their only chance had been to throw back his first assault, and his people had been down and among them before they’d reacted to the unexpected attack.

  If one of the unarmed techs running around was willing to commit suicide to prevent capture, and the shuttles contained tech that the A!Tol Imperium didn’t have, then…

  Sixteen fusion cores overloaded simultaneously and the world tried to end in fire and thunder.

  #

  When the shock faded, James was still in the dark. After mentally making sure he wasn’t dead, a system self-check showed that the Commando armor’s sensors and screens were still working. There just wasn’t any light reaching him.

  His limbs didn’t want to move either. He was buried. The armor happily responded to his query and confirmed that there was no oxygen and he was using the suit’s supply. He had a day or so of air, give or take, but he also wasn’t sure quite how buried he was.

  “Company COs, report,” he ordered. “What’s our status?”

  “My people are moving into the perimeter of the blast zone,” Sommers replied instantly. “We’re having interference with communications and safety beacons; your suit has better transmitters than most.”

  “For a reason,” James confirmed. “I’m buried, looks like under one of their prefabs and probably a few tons of debris. Everyone else, sound off.”

  “I’ve lost contact with half my men,” Carver told him. “Can’t be certain how many are actual casualties versus interference or suit damage,” the Imperial Marine continued, “but I’m coordinating everyone aboveground for search and rescue.”

  “I am with Carver,” Company Commander Vildar added. The translator easily picked up the precise but exhausted tone of the Yin’s speech. “More of my people have reported in, but many are buried. We are beginning to dig them and the Guard out.”

  “Alpha is with Bravo; we’re securing the perimeter and sweeping in,” Captain Marković reported. “I’ve lost contact with the entire platoon that was on site,” she concluded grimly. “They were far too damned close to the shuttles.”

  “We didn’t expect them to blow themselves up,” James replied, cutting off any self-recrimination before it could start. “The Kanzi might run a theocracy, but they’re not usually fanatics. This whole mess just stinks, and not just because I’m buried in three tons of dirt and half-melted ice.”

  Or because, in a worst-case scenario, he’d just lost the best part of three hundred sentients.

  “We can prioritize you, sir,” Sommers offered.

  “Not a chance,” James ordered. “My suit is undamaged and I have air and coms. I’m the last damn priority, not the first.”

  He managed to clench his fist, clearing a tiny pocket that he could move in. It was a start.

  “Besides, I’m pretty sure I can dig myself out soon enough. Focus on the wounded and those in damaged suits,” he continued. “Then, once we’ve dug everyone out, I want to go over this damn plateau with a fine-toothed comb.

  “Whoever these people are, they sacrificed four Core Power–level destroyers to land this expedition and then blew it to hell the moment it was compromised. That’s not normal Kanzi MO, people.

  “They were looking for something and I want to know what.”

  #

  Chapter 5

  Digging everyone out took most of one of Hope’s thirty-two-hour days. Despite his optimism, even James ended up having to be dug out by the search-and-rescue sweep from his Guard companies, but their actual losses were far lighter than he had any right to expect.

  One Guard platoon had been entirely wiped out, too close to the shuttles when they blew. Another fifty humans and Yin, mostly Marines but with a dozen or so of James’s men, had been killed either in the landing or the explosions. A hundred of both species and services had been wounded and evacuated back to the hospitals at New Hope City.

  Eight badly wounded enough to be evacuated up to Liberty. There were few wounded from the space battle, but the Militia cruiser had the best medical facilities in the star system. Two of the badly wounded would need be cryogenically suspended until they could be returned to Terra or another major world with modern medicine.

  That report made James shake his head. Injuries that severe would have been classed as dead on arrival by Terra’s best medicine five years before. Technically, they were dead: their hearts had stopped beating but their suits had an emergency system to provide nutrients and warmth to the brain.

  It wasn’t clean or pretty, but at the point the heart was stopped or missing, having to rebuild a chunk of the soldier’s skull was a minor concern.

  James stood on the edge of the crater, studying the pattern the fusion overloads had created. It resembled nothing so much as a sixteen-petalled flower, an oddly poetic and pretty pattern for having been forged of fire and death.

  “Have we managed to retrieve anything useful from the shuttles?” he asked Sommers.

  “Nothing,” the Captain admitted. “We’re still picking through the debris of what they’d off-loaded, but the shuttles and their contents were completely vaporized.” The blond Guard shook his head. “Yeah, a fusion-core overload is quite a boom, but that level of complete destruction… They were designed for it.”

  “To be destroyed without a trace?” James said.

  “Exactly. Whoever launched this op wanted to be damn sure there’d be nothing left if it went sideways. They wrote off, what? Four destroyers, half a battalion of ground troops and the same in support techs and what might have even been civilians?” Sommers shook his head again.

  “You’re right, sir: they were looking for something. This wasn’t an invasion attempt or they’d have come down on New Hope City and held the damn colony hostage with those fusion cores.”

  “Fanatics,” James confirmed. He’d been a member of the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service before he’d been Special Space Service. He kn
ew how fanatics of any stripe worked.

  “It was a do-or-die op,” Sommers agreed. “A moon shot with a million ways it could go wrong. So…”

  “So, everything they sent was expendable—including destroyers that could go head-to-head with our cruisers,” the Ducal Guard General concluded. “If the Kanzi have enough of those that they can throw them away, that’s a problem.”

  “I’m not sure these guys are Theocracy, sir,” the junior man said. “Dana’s people were pulling together what gear and bodies we have, and there’s a lot of things that don’t line up. They’re Kanzi, but…”

  “But?”

  “Go check in with Dana,” Sommers suggested. “I’ve just been eavesdropping on her channel; she’s the one with the bodies.”

  #

  There were surprisingly few bodies left of the invaders. Even with the explosions, James would have expected there to be at least some of the power-armored soldiers left, but when he found Captain Dana Marković and Company Commander Vildar speaking softly next to the lines of the enemy dead, he counted fewer than fifty bodies.

  “Ah, General,” Marković greeted him. “Come to stare at the macabre and the curious like the rest of us?”

  “I suppose?” he replied. “What have you found?”

  “Well, firstly, we have no intact samples of their armor,” she said immediately. “A suicide protocol overloaded the internal ammunition storage, vaporized the systems, most of the armor itself, and the occupant.”

  James winced. That was not a protocol he’d authorize installing on his people’s gear. It could go far too wrong far too easily.

  “How do we have any bodies, then?”

  “Some of the unarmored landing parties were far enough out that they survived the explosions intact.” She shrugged. “Not sure how many of them lived through the explosion, to be honest. At least one poisoned herself, but most of the rest we’d need to autopsy to identify the exact cause of death.