Fire on the Frontline Read online

  Stephanie and Joseph crossed when the first three were at the midpoint of the building. Ashley stopped at the corner and glanced around it. Two streets down, a small patrol of Udenar looked their way. Jerking her head back, she motioned for the other two to get low. She mouthed the word patrol and held up four fingers, then used two fingers to point behind her.

  Tira dropped to her belly and creeped to the corner, barely peaking around. She held her breath, then got up and whispered, “They’re looking the other way. We can make it if we’re quick.”

  Ashley nodded and motioned for Tira to go first. Tira looked around the corner, then sprinted across the way, with Adam right behind her. Ashley hesitated for a moment, then ran toward the group. The others were at the end of the building, and Billy motioned for them to catch up.

  “We got problems,” he whispered when the three of them caught up. “Two patrols around the corner, and they outfitted a local truck with a damn machine gun that’s pointed in our direction.”

  Ashley looked around, not seeing anything that could help them, when Joseph tapped her shoulder.

  “Stephanie and I can get up top. Stephanie on that building over there,” he said, pointing at the building behind them. “And me on top of this one. If I’m quiet enough, I’ll drop a grenade or two on them. If I hit it right, it’ll take most of them out and give you guys enough of a distraction to get across. Steph and I will catch up after.”

  The building was only a little over twenty feet up, and there was a ladder leading up, but Ashley didn’t like it. However, she knew that there was no other way to get past.

  Nodding her head, Stephanie ran off to the far building and started climbing. Joseph scrambled up the nearby ladder. Within seconds, both were on top of the buildings and Ashley could see the tip of Stephanie’s sniper rifle rest on the roof. Another three heartbeats went by before three explosions rocked the street.

  Risking a quick look around the corner, Ashley could see what was left of the truck up in flames, and a few Udenar soldiers picking themselves off the ground. Four silent gunshots later, nothing moved except the flames of the fire.

  “Move, move, move!” Ashley said with an urgent tone. The six of them ran by the destruction and made their way towards the Town Hall. With one block left, Joseph and Stephanie joined them.

  Billy led them to the back of a small store across the street from the Town Hall, then motioned for them to stop. He headed for the corner and peaked around. A gun shot rang out and Billy dropped to the ground, his head almost gone.

  “Fuck! Lout, Henry, Joseph, get to the corner and lay down cover fire. Stephanie, you and Adam get behind that truck over there and see if you can start picking them off. Tira, you’re with me.”

  Ashley kicked the back door of the store and walked in, rifle at the ready. Tira came in half a pace behind her. Gunfire played outside as they made their way through display racks of clothing. The store was empty, and no one was inside. “They were waiting for us to get here. Dammit!”

  “Ma’am...”

  Tira pointed out the windows. Three Udenar soldiers were crouched down, looking as though they were ready to rush around the corner. Ashley looked at Tira and held up three fingers, then two. Tira nodded, took aim, and counted to zero in her head. They shot at the same time, each hitting a soldier in the head, then shot again, putting two holes in the one in the middle.

  Rushing to the door, Ashley could see about ten Udenar grunts, the small brownish-green skinned ones with one large gray one yelling out orders to them. Ashley clicked on her comm. “Stephanie, do you see the big gray one?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “He’s the officer. Take him out.” She clicked over to Joseph. “Joseph, as soon as Stephanie takes out the officer, I want one of you to throw a few smoke grenades, create some cover.” She clicked off her comm and looked at Tira. She wondered how she had come to trust this girl so well, so quickly, but just knew that she did.

  “As soon as the smoke grenades go off, we rush out here and shoot every last one of those bastards.”

  Tira nodded at the same time that the gray one’s head exploded. Then the smoke grenades went off. They rushed out, rifles firing. From their right came Lout, Henry, and Joseph, each of them laying down heavy fire. The Udenar grunts that remained were cut down quickly. Ushering everyone into Town Hall and only waiting a few seconds for Adam and Stephanie, the group went inside.

  “Jeryl?” Ashley said into her comm as she checked her map. The servers’ room, where the centralized AI operated from, was nearby.

  “Status?”

  “It’s ours.”

  Chapter 28

  Jeryl

  The human brain is a thing of brilliance.

  But still, as Jeryl looked around CNC, it just annoyed the shit out of him. He couldn’t stop thinking about an old quote from Dalai Lama, an old spiritual leader from Earth’s Golden Age.

  We may say prayers when are trying to solve problems we face, but it is up to us to put an end to violence and bring about peace. Creating peace is our responsibility. To pray for peace while still engaging in the causes that give rise to violence is contradictory.

  Jeryl found it funny that he thought of that quote at a time like this. He had tried so hard to end the violent Earth-Sonali war and bring about peace, and yet here he was.

  Still fighting, still at war.

  They hadn’t been even able to make the proper repairs before jumping back into the fight. His ship and his crew were in serious danger. His wife was on the planet trying to gain control of the computers that ran the transport ships. His new head of nav was good, his whole nav crew was good…but Ferriero still needed more experience. Sure, Ferriero had Petty Officer MJ Montrose to assist him, as she had been learning under Docherty…but still, Jeryl was relying on two crew members that still needed more experience under their belt.

  He looked around the bridge. Lieutenant Mary Taylor, an ebony powerhouse that drew everyone’s attention, was trying to monitor communications with the ten remaining Hunters, engineering, sickbay, and him. Her protégé, whom Jeryl had assigned despite Mary’s arguments, was monitoring the comms for Ashley’s team and the rest of the ship.

  Ferriero, who Jeryl knew was an experienced nav officer and was more than capable for his job, was flying The Seeker as best as he could, doing everything he could to keep from getting surrounded by the four Udenar cruisers. He was doing good, but they were still taking damage.

  He couldn’t even think of who his current security chief stand-in was, but he was sure that person was doing his job.

  Actually, everyone’s doing their job well. They’re doing it even better than me, Jeryl thought to himself.

  He felt like he was losing control. He was shouting out orders, helping his navigators see things that they might have missed, trying to point out possible weak points in the Udenar attack, but it seemed as though he was a simple bystander as he went through the motions.

  The doors opened behind him and three more officers came onto the bridge. They were Daniel and his tech team, the ones that would take over the AI that controlled the transport ships on Galea. As soon as Ashley and her team got control of the computers, the three would jack into them remotely and send them to all the different places they were needed.

  He was trying to save as many civilians and rebels as possible. His orders were to glass the planet, to obliterate the entire rock, to blast the thing with particle beams and torpedoes until there was nothing left of it.

  He was trying to save the civilians, but there was going to be a lot of nature that was going to be destroyed and lost. Galea was home to flower that they still hadn’t found anywhere else in the galaxy, and it was going to be destroyed. Animals, vegetation, and everything that these people had put their hard work into for so long was going to be gone—just like that.

  He directed Daniel and his team to the consoles designated for them. They logged in, brought up the screens they needed to keep track of t
he automated systems that reloaded the Hunters as they came in and out of the hangar, and brought up secondary, or tertiary, screens that would allow them to take over the AI for the transports.

  “Captain! Shields are flickering out. Something’s wrong with the power grid!”

  “Mary!”

  “Engineering’s trying to figure it out sir, but they can’t find the reason.”

  MJ glanced back, “Sir?”

  “What is it MJ?”

  “Sir, I have experience with this from when I was on the Washington. I can fix it!”

  “What do you need to do?”

  “I need to get down to Engineering, then into the primary power cycler and…”

  “Do it!” Jeryl interrupted her. She jumped out of her seat and raced for the lift.

  Jeryl jumped into her seat and took over the weapons systems. It had been a while since he had done this, but this was where he had started long ago when he was first on a ship. Controls had changed a lot since those days, but he knew the basics, and that was all that was needed at the moment.

  It was weird—but not being in the Captain’s seat and not being in charge calmed him. He felt relaxed despite the adrenaline. He was relieved despite the insanity happening around him. He found himself focused despite the myriad of things that demanded his attention. It felt good to not be in charge—to be in control of just one thing. It felt damn good.

  Mary’s voice killed that feeling. “Captain, I need you to see this.”

  Jeryl got up and went to her station, and Mary pointed at her helper’s screen; he had managed to tap into Ashley’s HUD and had turned on her viewer.

  They were in atmosphere but looked to be crashing.

  Jeryl’s heart jumped into his throat—he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. Everything disappeared except for the screen. If anything happened to her, he didn’t know what he would do.

  If that shuttle crashed, not only would the mission be a total waste, but the love of his life would be dead, or so badly wounded that she’d die before help got to her…

  Jeryl shook the bad thoughts off from his head and forced himself to concentrate on what was going on. He could see Ashley’s fingers pounding furiously on her console, most likely trying to get their shuttle under control. Then, as the ground got closer and closer, the shuttle stopped dropping and changed direction. The display moved like she had just let out a deep breath and it swiveled to look at Tira, who was smiling as she flew the shuttle.

  “Jesus, they’re both insane.”

  Mary shook her head and chuckled slightly. “It’s like they’re both adrenaline junkies.”

  “Yeah. How’s MJ doing with the shields?”

  “She’s gotten them stable sir, but we’re dropping fast.”

  Jeryl grunted and turned back to the viewscreen. One of the cruisers was down, three giant holes in its hull. Another was limping along with only one engine, but the other two were continuing their bombardment on The Seeker, staying as far away from one another as possible.

  Two of the Hunters were destroyed, another was out of commission, and a fourth had lost one of its pilots. Out of the ten Hunters that had gone out, five were still fully operational while the other three had some level of damage.

  On the bright side, of the two dozen raiders that had started the attack, only seven remained.

  Jeryl went back to his chair and called up his screen. Shields were under thirty-five percent. They were dangerously low on torpedoes, and he had to save those for the planet. Both starboard side rail guns were gone.

  “Ferriero, I got a stupid idea,” Jeryl said as he looked up from his screen.

  Without taking his eyes from his screen, Ferriero turned his head slightly. “What’s your idea, sir?”

  “Battering ram.”

  That made Ferriero and everyone else on the CNC turn to look at Jeryl.

  “Not an actual battering ram, but we floor it and rush one of the carriers as though we’re going to ram it, then break off at the last second, hitting it as hard as we can with as many of our laser cannons as possible, along with the particle cannon.”

  Ferriero’s eyes lit up and he smiled, turning back to his screen. The security officer mumbled something under his breath.

  Mary didn’t bother to hide her enthusiasm. “Goddamn craziest, dumbest idea I’ve heard in a while.”

  Jeryl grinned and ordered Ferriero to do it. Just as he was shifting The Seeker to the right so they could use all of their left side guns, Jeryl heard Ashley through the comm.

  “Jeryl?”

  “Status?” He asked quickly.

  “We got it.”

  Jeryl turned to Daniel and his team. “Wait till she has the system under control. Then jack in and get those damn transports moving, and make sure you get as much on each transport as you can safely get.” He turned to Mary. “Tell them to get their asses back up here, then tell weapons to get ready to glass that rock.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  He thought back to that Dalai Lama quote again.

  I guess I’ll just have to find a way to get peace for everyone later.

  Chapter 29

  Jeryl

  Two hundred thousand.

  This was the number of civilians the rebels managed to pack up inside the transporters. It was a good number too, since it accounted for almost all of Galea’s population. It was also an advantage that Galea was a small farming colony, or else Jeryl would have never managed to pull it off.

  “Give me some good news, Mary!” Jeryl shouted over the loud chatter, and Mary looked over her shoulder at him. She was sweating, trying to keep up with the barrage of information she was receiving, and her hair was plastered to her forehead. Still, the expression on her face told Jeryl that she did have some good news to give him.

  “All transport shuttles have confirmed take-off!” Mary said, looking back at her screens.

  “Yup, they’re en route to destination,” one of the techs manning the centralized AI system confirmed, still furiously typing on his holographic keyboard. “The Udenar have tried to remotely deny us access to the system, but we’re in luck—these assholes can’t code for shit! Sorry for the language, sir.”

  “Screw being polite,” Jeryl said, allowing himself a smile. “This is about saving lives—and winning.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “How much ‘til the shuttles hit orbit?”

  “Two minutes, sir!” one of the Ensigns bellowed as the CNC rocked, another laser beam making its way past The Seeker’s weakened shields and hitting it in the hull.

  I hope these two minutes go by fast, or else we’re fucked, Jeryl thought as he looked at the holographic projection of the battle.

  The Hunters were flying around The Seeker like angry wasps, trying to protect it from the brunt of the Udenar assault, but Jeryl knew that they wouldn’t be able to keep that up for too long. The other Udenar fleets had already noticed they had fallen for a ruse, and they were already en route to join the fleet attacking The Seeker.

  Once that happened, they wouldn’t even be able to escape. There was only one way for them to survive—and that was to glass the entire colony and pray to God that would be enough to make the Udenar scatter.

  After all, with Galea destroyed, Jeryl doubted their Tyreesian overlords would still keep them on the payroll for services rendered—Tyreesians weren’t that forgiving. Sure, they could still use the Udenar after this, but Jeryl had no doubt in his mind that every single Udenar involved in a Galea fiasco would pay a hefty price for the failure.

  “Shuttles have left the atmosphere, sir!” Ferriero announced. His voice was clipped, and despite doing a stellar job at replacing Docherty, Jeryl could tell the man was sweating bullets. His auxiliary nav officer, MJ, has just returned to her workstation from stabilizing The Seeker’s shields in Engineering.

  “What about Commander Gavin’s shuttle?”

  “Twenty seconds ‘til she’s out of range—then we’ll be able to
strike without concern for the shuttle,” MJ offered, and Jeryl sat back down in his chair, mentally counting down the seconds.

  He glanced at the battle’s holographic projection and gritted his teeth—it was chaos out there, shots being fired at The Seeker from every single direction while the Hunters tried to keep a tidal wave of raiders at bay.

  Twenty-seconds almost seemed like twenty centuries.

  “Commander Gavin has left the atmosphere,” Ferriero shouted, then continued so loud Jeryl was surprised he didn’t ruin his throat. “WE’RE FREE TO ENGAGE!”

  “Then fire away,” Jeryl said coldly, gripping the armrests on his chair so tightly he could almost hear the metal bend under his fingers.

  “Particle beams, fire!” Someone shouted, and it was almost as if time halted. Jeryl’s heart skipped a beat as the massive particle beams erupted from The Seeker’s particle cannons and made their way onto Galea’s surface. All the chatter inside the CNC died down as everyone turned their attention to the viewscreen. They watched as massive explosions ravaged the entire colony, like blisters taking over a dying man’s body.

  “Torpedoes,” Jeryl cut through the silence, and his officers got to work, redirecting all their artillery from the Udenar fleet to Galea’s surface. The Udenar kept firing away, taking advantage as The Seeker focused on glassing the small colony.

  “Activate the secondary probes!” Jeryl ordered, and then he simply prayed for the best.

  Even though he knew the Udenar would probably scatter after Galea’s destruction, he had something else in store: he had another set of probes hidden away around the orbit, and they’d only be active when they were done with the planet. The probes will send a signal, passing as Armada battleships, and hopefully they’d scare the Udenar enough to allow The Seeker to jump into safety.

  Jeryl wasn’t sure if the Udenar would fall for it again, but that was his last ace in the hole.

  If the Udenar kept on firing, The Seeker was done.

  For five long seconds that almost seemed to stretch into eternity, no one spoke. They just watched as the Udenar unleashed hell against The Seeker’s outer fuselage. Everyone held onto their workstations so hard that Jeryl almost expected someone to eventually rip one of the things out of the damn wall.