No one from Haven scouted the landing zone, so no one saw the side doors slide open and the great armored figures pour out onto the dusty brown sand. Their formations were meticulous, perfect. There was no hesitation, no need to pause and form up…they just moved out spaced at exact ten meter intervals.
The attackers moved quickly, traversing the 10 kilometers to Haven in less than twenty minutes. They paused two klicks out and opened fire. They carried a full magnetic auto-cannon on each arm, and their hyper-velocity rounds ravaged the settlement, tearing right through buildings, vehicles, equipment…and colonists.
The settlers panicked, running through the village, screaming, desperately searching for cover that simply didn’t exist. At least a third of the Havenites were killed in the first two minutes, the rest stampeding through the town in blind terror.
Ian Tremaine walked slowly through the town common in shock, seemingly oblivious to the chaos and destruction around him. He’d been in the communications hut since the landing ships were first spotted, trying vainly to contact the enemy, broadcasting the planet’s surrender on every frequency. His panicked mind raced, trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t understand. Why wouldn’t they respond? Why wouldn’t they accept the surrender? His people weren’t warriors; they weren’t a threat to anyone.
Now his worst fears were realized. The invaders weren’t interested in surrenders or prisoners…they were here to slaughter the colonists. He walked across the village in a daze, only blind luck keeping him from being hit. He couldn’t remember how long he wandered like that, but then the madness took him. That’s when he first felt the rage, the drive to fight back, to kill the enemy.
He ran to the shed where the guns were stored, calling for those closest to follow. The storage building was a prefabricated metal structure 10 meters square. Tremaine had been heading around the corner toward the door, but the entire side closest to him had been ripped open by enemy fire, and he ran through the gaping hole. The shed had been ravaged by auto-cannon rounds, but the gun locker was untouched. He punched the combination into the locking mechanism, and the door slid open, revealing twenty light mag rifles stored in two neat rows. He grabbed them one at a time, handing them off to the villagers who had followed him into the shed.
Taking the last gun for himself, he ran out into the common. There were dead and wounded colonists everywhere, and the horrific sight fed his growing hatred. “To the mountains.” He screamed as loud as he could, waving his arm and pointing north toward the looming peaks. “Run! Abandon the village! To the mountains, now!”
Tremaine gripped the rifle tightly and ran around the settlement, grabbing stunned colonists and pushing them toward the northern gate. “Flee to the mountains. We will regroup there.” He repeated his entreaties as he ran back to the northern gate, pushing the terrified settlers through the narrow opening. Finally, when everyone still alive had fled, Ian Tremaine took one last look back at the dying settlement that had been his life’s greatest achievement, and he ran across the plain toward the rugged foothills to the north where his people would make their last, futile stand.
Chapter 6
“Who the hell was it? The Caliphate? The CAC?” Erik Cain’s voice was sharp, edgy. He was masking most of the rage, but he couldn’t hide it all.
“We don’t know yet, Erik.” General Darius Jax stood in front of Cain, his bulk dominating the room as it usually did. Jax was meticulous as always, his uniform neatly pressed, looking like he’d just put it on. But he was tense, rushed, his body rigid. Something was very wrong; that much was clear. “General Holm sent me right over to tell you what little we know.” Jax paused for an instant before continuing with a slight frown. “He didn’t want this on the com yet.”
Cain sighed forcefully. They’d all been operating carefully for the last year…ever since they’d uncovered the true extent of Alliance Intelligence’s infiltration. Cain hated the spy service - he hated all of Alliance Gov - but his anger had reached a new and frightening level since the rebellions. He loved the Marine Corps. It had saved him; it had made him all he’d become. It was home, a family of brothers and sisters that operated, as much as anything, on trust. Now they were afraid to even use their own communications systems. The Corps had endured despite the plot to destroy it, but he wondered if they would survive the paranoia left in its wake.
“So what do we know?” Erik stood next to his silver metal desk, wearing his uniform pants and a gray t-shirt with the Marine Corps emblem on the left breast. His jacket was laying on a small table near the door where Cain had carelessly tossed it. It was late, though he’d still been working when Jax came running in. He motioned for the big Marine to take a seat, but he remained standing himself. “Go through it from the beginning.”
Jax glanced at the chair Cain was pointing at, but he continued to stand. “Admiral Garret’s people got a transmission on Commnet. It was a Priority Alpha distress call from a ship called the Northstar. She’s a research and scout vessel attached to a support fleet en route to the Newton colony out on the Rim. Apparently she had some sort of malfunction and fell out of the fleet formation before making the final transit.” Jax paused briefly, allowing Cain to absorb what he was saying.
Cain nodded. He was vaguely aware of Newton. The planet was far from rating a Marine garrison, but he still got reports on new settlements. Ultimately the Corps was responsible for defending them all. “Go on.” He didn’t snap at Jax, not exactly, but Cain wasn’t the most patient of men either.
“She made repairs and passed through the warp gate, but shortly after entering the system she received a series of transmissions from the rest of the fleet.” Jax’s tone was somber as he continued. “The last of the signals carried Delta-Z protocols.”
Erik was listening, but his mind was racing too, considering all of the possibilities. Newton was nowhere close to the borders with any of the other Powers but, of course, it would only take the discovery of a new warp gate, and the strategic map would be instantly redrawn. Cain himself had used such a newly located warp gate to surprise the Caliphate and seize the Gliese 250 system years before. It was a little soon after the peace to start paying attention to historians, but they were already calling that campaign the turning point of the war.
“There is no commnet station in Newton’s system yet, so Northstar decelerated and transited back through the warp gate so they could transmit a report. Her captain is a navy vet, so he kept his cool and did what he had to do.”
Cain sighed again, and he walked around the desk to his chair, sitting down forcefully and motioning again for Jax to take one of the guest chairs. “Whoever is hitting us picked a hell of a time. Another few months and we’d have had 1 st Division better organized and up to 3 brigades.”
Jax nodded as he reached out and turned the chair slightly. “It’s a bad time for sure. But that’s not the worst of it.” He slid the chair closer and dropped his massive frame into it. “There’s more.”
Cain looked back with a pained expression. “For twenty years there’s always been more.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “What is it?”
“The files Northstar transmitted have some details on the attack against the fleet.” Jax hesitated, looking at Cain but not saying anything.
“What’s wrong with you?” Erik looked quizzically at his friend and executive officer. “Speak up. What about the files?”
Jax took a breath. “Erik, the weapons that attacked the colony fleet are like nothing we’ve ever seen before.” He pulled a data chip out of his pocket and placed it gently on Cain’s desk. “You’ll want to review everything on this chip very carefully. But make sure you’re on a secure closed system. The general doesn’t want any of this on the net.” Jax’s voice was tense, more so than Cain had ever heard it, at least when they weren’t on the battlefield. He’d just seen the contents of the chip himself an hour before, and he was still a bit in shock.