Wrath of Axia (The Arcadian Jihad) (25 page)

They tore across the surface, and only a few desultory shots were directed towards them. They stopped only to pick up their own armor destroyers. Blas had one of them, a sergeant in his vehicle.

“Damnit, Sir, it’s not fair. We nearly had them. I could have been a commissioned officer by tonight.”

“Sergeant, think yourself lucky. The promotion would have been posthumous if you’d stayed any longer.”

“All the same, Sir, we could have…”

“Sergeant, there’ll be another day. You’ll be a live lieutenant before much longer, there’s no doubt. This war has a long way to go yet.”

“It has, Sir? Damn, that’s good news, and I thought my chance had gone. It’s my girlfriend, you see, she’d got a thing about officers.”

“I know exactly what you mean, Sergeant,” he replied solemnly. He wasn’t entirely successful in avoiding Saffron’s kick from the gunner’s seat.

They roared through the gates that were slammed shut immediately after them. Rusal was waiting in the open and Tell stood with him. Their faces were grim. Damnit, they’d all done their best. They’d shed blood and killed vast numbers of the enemy. He stomped up to Rusal.

“Admiral, the men fought like devils today. You couldn’t have asked any more of them.”

“I know that, Captain. They’re heroes, every single one of them. We’ll need them, too. It’s not the performance of the men that concerns us. Our intelligence people intercepted a message from Axis Nova to Rad Bose on Cadmus. The Grand Fleet is coming here, under the personal command of Fabian Bartok. They’ll have thousands of ships and men.”

“How long before they get here?”

Rusal shrugged. “They’ll need time to recall men from leave, to re-equip and re-arm. This’ll catch their people unawares as much as it does us. I’d guess we have no more than two weeks.”

“That’s good news, Sir.”

“Good?” Rusal looked frosty. “What do you mean?”

“It’ll save us going to Axis Nova to get the bastards, Sir.”

“I think their object is to get us first, Constantine.”

“Then let’s ensure that they don’t, Sir. We’ll prepare a warm reception for them.”

“Can we hold that many ships?” Tell asked. Blas noticed for the first time that his habitual calm looked to have deserted him, and he looked agitated.

“Mr. President,” Rusal replied. “Here’s a quote for you from an old military man. ‘Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as unlimited target selection’. We are about to have the opportunity to hit them from all sides. I’d say that gives us something of an advantage.”

“I hope so,” Tell replied, not quite convinced. Perhaps he was not so happy about being upstaged for once with a quotation.

For the following fortnight, fragmented intelligence about the Grand Fleet trickled in. Rad Bose had managed to get his ship into space together with the rest of his fleet. He joined up with Fabian Bartok on the very rim of the Arcturus System, where the two great fleets waited while they completed their preparations for the attack. On Isolde, defenders worked with more urgency. Massively outnumbered and outgunned, they were pressed from all sides. The enemy land forces still laid siege to the walls of Sana, despite continual sorties to sap their morale and reduce their fighting ability. Squashed between that huge army on land and the Presidential fleet waiting on the edge of the Solar System, they needed no further reminder of their desperate situation. Berg Smetana’s force had not made contact with Rusal’s headquarters. It could mean that the wily Hesperian was maintaining comms silence, or that his troops had been ambushed and killed. By mutual consent, none of the leaders discussed Berg’s secondary attack. Either he would come through, or he would not. At the regular morning briefing, Blas brought diagrams and charts to show the Admiral his idea.

“It’s the orbiting defense platforms, Sir. There are eight of them at present, and I think we can assume that the Grand Fleet will attack here,” he pointed to a place on the map. “Now that we have control of the platforms, we can re-align them so that all eight are in position to act as a strong defense against the enemy fleet. They wouldn’t be expecting it either, so when they approach Isolde they’ll be in for a nasty shock. It could even up the odds for us.”

“You mean from twenty to one to about ten to one?” Rusal smiled. “No, forget I said that. It’s a good idea, except for one thing.”

“You mean if the enemy attack from the other side of the planet?”

“Exactly. In that case our platforms would be useless and they’ll fall on us like savages. We’ll have nothing to hold them back.”

Blas shrugged. “I know that, Sir. It’s a gamble, a huge risk, but I say it’s a risk worth taking.”

The Admiral nodded. “Very well, do it. I’ll advise the President. He’s got another problem to deal with too. We’re running out of food.”

“How bad is it?”

“Five more days, then we have to cut the rations in half. Even though we’re not completely cut off, the enemy attacks on our supply lines have been disastrous.”

They looked around as a comms operator ran up to them. “We have a problem, a strong enemy force has appeared a hundred miles away to the south. They’re attacking one of our mining operations, and the garrison is barely holding.”

Rusal and Blas looked at each other for a few seconds. “Could it be that they’ve diverted the main attack, Constantine? Have they sucker punched us?”

“No, Admiral. It has to be a small force. Otherwise, we’d have picked them up on our sensors, but they’ve sneaked in somehow. I’ll take some men and go to reinforce the garrison.”

“Very well, I’ll continue making the adjustments to the platform deployments. How many vehicles will you need?”

“I’ll take a hundred ASFVs. I imagine it will be enough. I don’t want to strip the city defenses, in case they decide to attack while I’m away.”

“It could be their intention,” Rusal pointed out. “This could just be a feint.”

“We don’t have a choice, Sir. I would suggest that the city defenses go on maximum alert just in case.”

“I’d already decided that,” Rusal smiled.

Blas gave orders and minutes later a hundred ASFVs were formed up ready to leave. He split them into two groups, red and blue. Saffron was already wearing her body armor and helmet and sat in the gunner’s seat. Once more he noticed how tiny she looked in the bulky armor. He looked across at his number two vehicle as the gunner was just getting on board. It was a new man, for some reason the gunner was very small too, just like Saffron. At least it would be a man, one of the troopers. Not the woman he dearly wished to stay back in the city where it was safe. He couldn’t deny the tremendous mental strength of Saffron, and she was an asset to his forces. But still, he hated the thought of exposing her to danger. Even her mental powers would not protect her from a stray shot. He swung aboard and took a last look at his command. They were all lined up, ready to go. Ready to fight. Blas clicked the command microphone.

“Squadron, move out!”

They left the city at the west gate, out of sight of the Tricon forces ranged against the east side, and raced at full speed across the open country. Their destination was a mining operation critical to the manufacture of ships on Isolde. Over millions of years a concentration of rare minerals had gradually evolved in an area of no more than four square miles. The deep mines and mineral exploitation produced more than three quarters of the rare elements needed to build modern weapons and ship engines. It was a clever attack, and the enemy knew they would have no option but to rush to defend it. They would have no choice but to engage in the kind of frontal attack that the Tricon commanders had been maneuvering for since they arrived on the planet. Blas looked around at his command racing across the open plain, pennants flying, leaving a mile long dust cloud behind them. If he had to go into battle, he’d to it with a group of men he could be proud of. And women, he smiled to himself, thinking of Saffron sitting in the gunner’s seat. Yes, he’d prefer she was back in the city but she was worth a hundred of his troopers, maybe a thousand. They crested a hill and saw the mining operation below, about five miles away. The enemy vehicles were ranged in a semi-circle on the far side of the mine, bombarding the defenders. There seemed to be no plan to attack the mine directly, and they seemed content to stand off and fire at a distance.

“We’ll attack either side of their battle line and see if we can roll it up towards the middle,” Blas shouted into his microphone. “Red group, take then west side, blue group, we’ll handle them from the east. Batten down, let’s go.”

He slammed the airtight hatch shut and checked that his tactical screens were all reporting correctly. They vectored to the east and his fifty vehicles charged at maximum speed towards the enemy. They destroyed five ASFVs almost at once, as the enemy was too busy firing at the mine to notice their approach. But when they did, the return fire started to slam into them. Laser cannon blazing, they charged towards the enemy, but they faced many times their number. The enemy outnumbered them more than five to one. By the time they got to the two-mile marker, Blas had lost fourteen of his vehicles to the heavy fire. They’d destroyed countless numbers of the enemy, but there were just too many. The intense fire would wipe out most of the remainder of his squadron. Then he saw the shallow crater in the ground; it would shelter them from the worst of the enemy fire while they regrouped. He keyed the microphone.

“Blue group, head for that crater and get behind some cover. Red group, try and find somewhere to shelter, they’re wiping us out.”

His depleted group hurtled into the crater and they experienced a blessed relief from the enemy fire, at least for now. He checked his sensors and saw that the enemy’s ASFVs were moving out and coming towards them. So their respite wasn’t going to be for too long. He started to give orders to deploy his armor, but he stopped as he looked again at his tactical screen. A huge armored force had moved into the gap between the mine and Sana city. At the same time, new squadrons were arriving to reinforce the enemy force already attacking the mine. What in space was happening?

Reports began to arrive from his men. He estimated that they had upwards of five hundred armored vehicles in front of them, another eight hundred behind them. Dust clouds told of more on the way. They’d walked into an ambush. Calls were coming in from his troops, requests for orders, for instructions, yet he was out of answers. He cursed himself for the arrogant fool that he was. He’d not given Tricon enough credit for the ability to arrive at a good plan. They knew that the rebels would suspect a feint attack and would send only a nominal force. They’d double-bluffed him, and now they had a hundred valuable, irreplaceable AFSVs within their grasp. They would move in and destroy them at will. Rusal was desperate for resources, so he wouldn’t be able to replace them and their loss would severely undermine his ability to fight. The clever, clever bastards, why hadn’t he seen it coming? He checked his screens again. The enemy had moved their armor up to mass it on the lip of the crater.

“We’ll take care of this.”

He looked up in astonishment. Saffron was removing her helmet and armor.

“What the hell are you doing? Keep your armor on and stay under cover.”

“I’m sorry Constantine, but I must disobey you. We planned this before we even left the city. We need to win these people over and you won’t do it with guns and armor. There simply isn’t enough.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand!”

She smiled at him. “No, you wouldn’t. Nightingale and I realized what they were doing. It was so clear that it was a double bluff.”

“Clear? Not to me it wasn’t. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because we wanted to call their double bluff with a triple bluff. We’re going to get them to surrender.”

His disbelief increased when Nightingale climbed out of the vehicle next to his. So that was why the gunner had looked so tiny. She was a woman.

The battle had stopped, and it was eerie. No guns fired, no vehicles moved. No troops made quick dashes from cover to cover. It was as if the scene was frozen in time. Except for the two women. Nightingale, dressed in a diaphanous, long dress came across to his vehicle. Saffron wore a one-piece black, silk jump suit and a bright red scarf. She joined Nightingale on the ground, and together the two women began to walk towards the enemy force. Blas watched, both fascinated and powerless to intervene. He opened the hatch and looked out. His commanders were opening their hatches and putting their heads up too. The Tricon command vehicle was huge and menacing in front of them, but its hatches remained closed. The two women walked straight up to it and stopped. Finally, the hatch opened and an officer stepped out. Some trick of the crater’s acoustics allowed him to hear every word that was said.

“Yes? What do you want?”

“We are here to negotiate a surrender, Colonel.”

“That is very sensible. Why have they sent women to do a man’s work?”

“No one sent us, and this is women’s work, nothing for a man. We are Orphexians.”

His face paled as the said the word ‘Orphexians’. “Don’t try and use your witches’ tricks on my troopers, ladies. I have a dozen laser cannon trained on you at this moment. If I lift my hand, they will blast you out of existence.”