Wrath of Axia (The Arcadian Jihad) (21 page)

Rusal made a last check that everything was in readiness. “Weapons officer, you may open fire at the ship.”

“Sir, their shields are going up,” he shouted.

“Fire! Before they’re at full power. Then raise our own shields.”

The laser beams surged out at the Heavy Battlecruiser. It was so near that they could see clearly the showers of sparks as the salvo hit. At the same time their shields started to go up.

“A hit, we’ve done some heavy damage. It looks like we’ve knocked out most of their laser batteries.”

Rusal nodded his congratulations at the weapons officer. It was standard tactics to hit the enemy armaments first, to prevent return fire.

“Keep hitting them. We need to…”

He was interrupted as the Rex Vitas salvo hit them. Their own shields were almost at full strength, but the awesome power of the surviving battery smashed into the area below the bridge. They were all thrown to the floor. Their own guns hit the Rex Vitas again, and again. Salvo after salvo smashed into the damaged vessel until it was unable to reply, its own batteries smashed by the Magellan’s surprise attack. Blas thought it was enough, for he’d no wish to inflict unnecessary suffering.

“Admiral, we need to get the marines over to that ship to secure it. I would suggest you ask for their surrender.”

Rusal nodded at Blas. “Will you go over with Berg, he’ll lead the troops? I’ll see if I can persuade them to lay down their arms first.”

Blas and Smetana armed themselves with laser pistols and rifles while the marine Captain assembled his men at the top of the ramp. Constantine and Berg joined them, in time to hear Rusal call down to them. “I can’t raise the ship. It may be that their comms gave gone down. Do you wish to abort?”

“Negative, Admiral. If we don’t go over there and take the ship we’ll have to pound it to pieces and kill every man in it. We’ll keep to plan.”

“Very well, I have instructed the weapons officer to hold our fire. Be careful and good luck.”

They rushed down the ramp, Blas and Smetana leading the first wave. Neither man saw Evelyn running alongside the troops of the second wave. They reached the ramp of the Rex Vitas, but it was closed. Smetana nodded at the men. “Blast it open.”

Two troopers ran forward with a heavy laser rifle and set it on the tripod. They took careful aim and fired a burst at the ramp. It tore a huge hole in the side of the Battlecruiser.

“Ropes,” Berg shouted. “Get some men up there, for we need a foothold on the ship.”

More troopers rushed forward and threw up ropes with grappling hooks that caught inside the Rex Vitas. They shinned up and stood guard. Inside the ship the ramp was intact but buckled, they lowered it and the troopers rush up inside the enemy vessel. Then the crew of the Rex Vitas hit back. A party of marines came running out of an airlock and started shooting. Blas and Berg’s men took cover, what little there was, and started to return fire. Their superior numbers and surprise attack meant it allowed them to force the defenders back. Passage by passage, cabin by cabin, they fought their way to the bridge.

The carnage was terrible, and the whole of the ship was a charnel house. Bodies of attackers and Rex Vitas defenders lay strewn over the decks, shattered and broken, most of them dead from the heavy laser blasts. When the bridge doors blew the defenders inside still refused to throw down their weapons and the fight continued. Finally there was only one junior communications lieutenant and three crewmen still unwounded, crouching behind cover. There was a strange lull in the firing as each side realized what terrible slaughter had been done this day. They were used to exchanging fire at long distance, where the enemy could be slaughtered anonymously, hundreds or thousands of miles away. Not this, it was barbaric. A pistol was thrown across the floor.

“I surrender.” It was the communications lieutenant. “You men, throw down your weapons. That’s an order.”

Three more laser pistols were thrown down, and the men climbed to their feet, hands in the air. Blas and Smetana were sheltering behind a steel console. They stood up and looked around.

“You men,” Smetana barked at two of the troopers. “Search them and make sure they’re disarmed. Lieutenant, you’d better broadcast the surrender to the rest of the ship.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He went to the console, under the muzzles of the guns and ordered the ship to surrender.

“Most of them had already given up,” he said. “That will take care of the real die-hards.”

“It’d better,” Smetana growled. “We lost a lot of good men. Some of our people would be happy to keep shooting.”

A soldier came onto the bridge and caught Blas’s eye. “Sir, would you come with me?”

“Why, what’s up?”

“It’s Evelyn Gluck, Sir. She’s been wounded.”

He felt a terrible, black cloud descend over the elation of the victory.

“Where is she?”

“Just inside the ramp, Sir. She came over in the second wave.”

He rushed back through the ship, almost slipping on the pools of blood that covered the floors. Piles of bodies bore witness to the ferocity of the fight, but only one mattered to him right now. She was at the very top of the ramp, half in the ship and half out. She’d taken a laser blast to the body as she came aboard. A medic was bending down to attend to her. “I’ve given her something for the pain, Sir.”

Blas stared him in the eyes and the man gave a small shake of the head. Not Evelyn, no!

He knelt down, her eyes were open and she stared at him. “Constantine, my darling, you came. How is the battle going?”

“We won, the ship is ours. You shouldn’t have joined the attack. Now you’ll be in sick bay for a couple of weeks.”

She smiled. “You forget I have the power to read minds. I know how bad this is, so don’t try to pretend different. Constantine, I haven’t got long. I want you to make two promises to me, if I mean anything at all to you.”

“You mean everything to me, Evelyn. You know that, I’ll do anything. What do you want from me?”

“Good, the first promise is to listen to Nightingale. She has a message for you. The second promise is this. I want you do to what she asks of you, whatever it is. It is a personal request from me. Will you do that?”

“Yes, anything, of course, but don’t talk now. You need to rest.”

He could see she was weakening fast, but he wanted her to live, forever. He’d planned to spend the rest of his life with Evelyn, but now her lifespan was measured only in minutes. He saw Nightingale walking up the damaged ramp. She’d heard that her lifelong friend was mortally injured.

“Constantine, tell me again that you promise. Whatever it is.”

“Yes, yes, anything. I promise. Evelyn, I love you so much.”

“And I you, my darling.”

And she died.

He held her for a few minutes, but then the medics had to take her body away. Nightingale held him to her. “It is a terrible loss, Constantine, to all of us. But it is one that she expected.”

“What? How could she?”

“Because so many have been killed and many more will be. She told me that her time might come before long. The Nine Systems have become a battleground, and you both have been at the center of much of the action. It was inevitable that one of you would not make it through to the end. Perhaps you too will succumb to the enemy before this is over.”

“That would suit me fine, Nightingale. I don’t want to go on without her.”

“I can’t imagine how you must feel, Constantine, but you must go on. Humanity depends on a few good, brave men doing what you and Admiral Rusal, Berg Smetana and the others are doing. You must fight for the salvation of all of us.”

 
“What was her message for me?”

“There are two messages, but she was adamant that you be told after her funeral, not before.”

“I loved her, you know. There’ll never be another like her.”

She didn’t reply. He left to go back to the bridge. Rusal was holding a council of war with Smetana and Max Biermann. They all stared at him.

“Constantine, we’re so sorry. She was everything to you, we know that.”

Blas nodded, but through his black despair forced his mind back to the job in hand. The time for mourning would come later. “What’s going on here, where are we with the battle?”

Rusal sighed. “You all did a magnificent job taking down the Rex Vitas. Their crew fought hard. We have a long way to go yet, though. Nightingale talked to Shemal Kerawan. He’s not happy about a pitched battle being fought inside his spaceport, but he agreed to give us more time before his is forced to retaliate. He put the shooting down to a weapons malfunction.”

Nightingale interrupted him. “Xerxes Tell’s message is being disseminated even as we speak. Kerawan knows that more and more people will join the rebellion, but he still wants to wait and see who comes out on top before he commits himself. It gives us more time but we have to hurry.”

“Time for what?” Blas asked. “What have you been discussing?”

Now it was Smetana’s turn. “That’s where I come in, my friend. This spaceport and the city of Sana next door are the most vital part of the planet. It’s where the technicians that build and repair the ships live and work. Most of the factories are here and, of course, the spaceport itself. Bartok’s forces are already on alert, and the General in command of the Isolde military has recalled his men to barracks. We believe that soon they’ll be marching on the city and spaceport. We need to find enough people in the city to form a militia to hold the walls.”

“Until when?”

“Until we’ve done what we came here to do, appropriate sufficient ships to form a fleet and start taking the fight to the enemy. It’s one thing having a population on our side, and all the signs are that they hate the present government enough to join us. But it’s another to have enough ships and weapons to fight with. We need to hold the city until we’re strong enough to take the rest of the planet.”

The following day Blas went into the city and made speech after speech, persuading the citizens to join them. Many did, by the end of the day his efforts and those of the others, Smetana, Rusal and Biermann had recruited almost ten thousand men to join them. Xerxes Tell went everywhere, cajoling and persuading, describing to the population how far his administration would go to redress the evil of Bartok’s tyranny. Blas went with him for a part of each day. Nightingale stayed with him, refusing to leave his side.

“Part of my promise to Evelyn was to watch over you, Constantine. She wanted you to be safe, so I’m probing the minds of everyone in the crowds to make sure there are no enemies waiting to kill you.”

It wasn’t an imaginary problem. Bartok’s men had many spies in the city and there had already been two unexplained deaths of Tell’s men. The next day he continued to work hard, driving himself from early morning until late at night. On the third day after her death, the funeral of Evelyn Gluck took place. It was a small, somber affair. Only the senior officers were present, Xerxes Tell read the eulogy and Blas watched in silence while her body was prepared for the leaving. Nightingale was there, and she had another young woman with her. She introduced Blas to her as a protégé, Saffron. An Orphexian. She was beautiful, in a different way to Evelyn, but she was a radiant. Like most Orphexians, she had the indefinable, fragile beauty that hid an immense power inside that many men feared. After the funeral they swapped stories of their comrade, Blas’ partner and lover. As the ceremony was ending, he approached Nightingale.

“Evelyn’s promises, what are they?”

She looked at him with sorrow in her eyes, for she too had sent away a best friend.

“Please, later, Constantine. It is too soon, so ask me again in a week.”

“We may not have a week.”

“We will, believe me.”

“So you know how much time we have?”

Sister Saffron was with her, and she answered him with a gentle smile that was both sincere and beguiling. “We have the rest of our lives, Mr. Blas.”

Her voice was soft, almost a tinkling sound like temple bells. It reminded him so much of Evelyn, he turned away.

It took them five more days to recruit the force they needed. Already, the planet was in chaos, even those who had not joined their defense militia had gone on general strike. At dawn on the sixth day, he prowled the walls, checking on the men, making sure that their laser cannons were ready, the rifles and pistols to hand, most important, that the men were alert. They were.

“You needn’t worry about us, Sir,” a former sergeant in the Rusal’s fleet said with a cheerful expression. “Before these bastards came to power I had a decent house for my wife and four kids. We had a ground car, holidays on Hesperia. It was a good life. Now we’ve got a company-owned slum and debts, debts and more debts. My wages don’t earn enough for us to eat, and yet those administrators ride around like lords. If anyone dares to protest they get thrown in jail, we’ve had enough. Don’t worry, we’ll fight, we’ve had enough of being slaves.”

His men nodded and cheered, Blas was heartened. What they lacked in experience and skill they would make up for with their bravery. A man shouted.

“They’re coming, dust on the horizon.”

Every man on the walls looked up. It was like a storm heading towards them, still ten miles away on the Isolde plain. Blas focused his portable viewscanner on the distant force. There were hundreds and hundreds of armored surface fighting vehicles. Troop carriers rumbled along behind them, together with mobile laser cannon.