Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Read online

  “Hold it.”

  He looked to his right, and in a corner between two battered wagons saw there was a trooper sitting upright on the ground, rifle aimed at them.

  “Identify yourselves.”

  “I’m Omin, this is Halfre.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “Uh… nobody. Ourselves.”

  “You’re not Them.”

  It was a statement rather than a question, and the trooper lowered his rifle. Omin saw that he was leaning heavily against one of the wagons, and had been in the process of applying a field dressing to his side.

  Halfre went forward to help him.

  “Rifleman Delanka, Second Platoon. All that’s left of it most likely. I got separated from my squad; scouting ahead when the enemy got the drop on them. Didn’t even get a chance to help them.”

  “We saw people killing soldiers,” said Omin. “They looked like regular people. They killed a lot of them but they took three away.”

  Delanka groaned, and Omin found it difficult to tell if it was because of what he had said, or because Halfre had tightened the bandage.

  “I don’t know why, or how, but it looks like They are using civilians as ground troops.”

  “Who are They?” Omin asked. “We don’t have a clue what’s happened.”

  “I have no idea,” Delanka said, “and I’m not sure anyone does. They hit the system hard. Must have taken down everything we had up there before we even knew about it ground-side. That fireball that hit the atmosphere just before dawn? That was the Vehement de-orbiting.”

  Halfre gasped.

  “Oh it gets worse. I guess you could see the attack on the capital from here?”

  “We saw,” said Omin. They could hardly have missed it even if they had tried.

  “Yeah, they knew what they were doing all right. One well-executed orbital strike, and the planet was theirs. Everything they’ve done since then has just been mopping up.”

  “Is anyone coming to help us?”

  “Gate’s not responding, so there’s no way to tell. My guess is They took it out first to stop us sending a distress call.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Halfre asked.

  “Hard to say. They have the upper hand right now. Only 104th Battalion were on the surface when the attack began, and most of our assets were still on the Vehement. I won’t lie; it’s a bad situation.”

  “I saw fighters earlier, headed north.” Omin said.

  “Air support would have come from Camp Camillion. My guess is the 104th have plotted up there and established an FOB.”

  Halfre looked confused. “A what?”

  “Forward Operating Base,” Delanka said. “They’ll lead the counter-attack from there. Assuming there’s anyone left, that is.”

  “We were going to find a vehicle and head south,” Omin said. “Come with us. We’ll go there instead, to the base.”

  “Are you insane? The moment you set off in one of those things you’ll have every enemy soldier in the town on you. Not to mention their ranged weapons.”

  “What else are we supposed to do?”

  “Pick a direction and start walking. Running is better.”

  “We’ll never make it on our own.”

  “I’m not going to be much good to you, reckon I’ll just slow you down.”

  “Aren’t you even going to—”

  Omin dropped to the ground, the sentence hanging in the air. He pressed a finger to his lips and both Delanka and Halfre fell silent immediately.

  Yellow Dress was standing at the entrance to the plaza, the way he and Halfre had come in.

  On hands and knees, Omin edged around the nose of one of the wagons until he could see her. She was now shuffling into the plaza, at right angles to their hiding place, and he figured that if she began to turn, he would have more than enough time to duck out of sight.

  Yellow Dress still carried the metal bar, shiny in the midday sun except for the far end, which glistened darkly. Thanks to the massacre in the Bright Way, he knew why. Her brown hair was matted and untidy, her dress was torn, and she now limped with each step. She must have picked up an injury during the fight. Even at that distance, Omin could see her cocking her head this way and that, like a predatory bird listening out for the tell-tale scrabbling of insect life. Once, she might have been a teacher, a doctor, or a musician. But not any more; now she was a monster.

  And she was humming.

  He could hear it clearly across the wide expanse of the plaza, even with the intervening vehicles. A slow, wistful melody, utterly alien yet strangely homely at the same time. He had never heard anything like it.

  As if to warn off any appreciation, Yellow Dress began to bash transports as she walked, hitting their side panels with the metal bar.

  BANG!

  Her lurching steps were punctuated by the jarring sound, and the occasional pattering cascade of safety glass.

  BANG!

  Seemingly oblivious to her limp, she stalked stiffly up and down the rows of vehicles, her head still moving this way and that in sharp feral jerks.

  BANG!

  Without warning, a young girl burst from a hiding place behind a wagon close to Yellow Dress. She ran towards Omin and the others, and he ducked back to cover instinctively.

  Yellow Dress released an unholy shriek as she began to give chase.

  “Get back,” said Delanka, shuffling towards Omin and exchanging places with him.

  The girl ran by, crying as she went, and Omin’s eyes briefly met hers. He could see that she was terrified.

  Yellow Dress lumbered into view, the bloodied bar held aloft, passed them by, and then stopped. She began to turn.

  A sharp crack split the air, horribly loud in the space between the wagons, and Yellow Dress fell backwards, her punctured skull hitting the ground with a wet crunch. The single shot echoed around the plaza.

  Halfre was up in an instant, and ran after the girl. Omin was too slow to stop her, and she disappeared quickly amongst the rows. He heard her soft calls fading as she went.

  “Halfre! Shit.”

  “Don’t let her get too far,” Delanka said. “We need to stay together.”

  “Thought you were leaving us to it?” Omin snapped.

  Delanka looked at the metal bar, still held fast in the dead woman’s tight grip. Tufts of human hair were stuck to the bloody coating. “I’ve reconsidered.”

  He winced as he rose to his feet, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and pressing his palm flat against the dressing. A bright red stain was already spreading through the bandages. “Go and find her, quickly.”

  Omin ran, following the path he had seen Halfre take. He could no longer hear her, and started to panic. Reaching the end of the row, he called out as loudly as he dared.

  “Over here,” he heard her say.

  He found her next to an upturned vehicle with smashed windows. Inside, he could see the young girl sitting on the roof, her legs drawn up to her body and her arms clutching her knees.

  “Come on, it’s okay,” Halfre was saying. The girl shook her head.

  Omin dropped to the ground once more, and smiled through the empty side window. “We’re going to leave the town,” he said. “You should come with us. It’s not safe here.”

  “Nowhere is safe,” the girl said. She could not have been older than twelve.

  “You’re safer with us than on your own,” Halfre said.

  Omin nodded. “We’re with a soldier.”

  The girl came out of the vehicle with her arms held out, and Halfre scooped her up.

  “Delanka changed his mind,” Omin told her. “He’s coming with us.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was behind me.”

  Halfre’s eyes widened, and she hissed at him. “Omin!”

  He followed her gaze, and his blood ran cold. Standing in the nearest entrance to the plaza, with a sickly grin smeared across his bloodied face, Blue Jacket and a half dozen others stood
watching them.

  “Go!” Omin yelled.

  Blue Jacket and the others watched as Halfre ran from them, still carrying the girl. They remained where they were, but turned their attention back to Omin.

  He pulled the grenade from his pocket, popped the cap, and pressed the red button: one, two.

  He threw it high overhead so that it came straight down amongst them. As it fell, Blue Jacket screamed and broke into a run. A moment later, the others did the same.

  It was a moment too late.

  The grenade exploded, blasting fire and metal shrapnel into the surrounding vehicles, walls, and people. Shredded bodies were thrown through the air, slamming into unyielding plasteel and tumbling raggedly to the ground. But still Blue Jacket kept coming.

  Omin had already turned to run the moment the grenade left his hand. He sprinted as fast as he could, weaving left and right whenever he got the chance. When he heard the blast he chanced a quick look back, saw the plume of smoke rising and a thin veil of powdery haze spreading outwards.

  Blue Jacket apparently did not intend to waste time bobbing left and right. He jumped onto the flat bed of a wagon and appeared to scour the plaza for signs of movement.

  Omin was out of breath by the time he reached the far side of the plaza, near the end of the wall and close to the junction of the outbound roads. His lungs burned, and he had a sharp pain in his side. He wanted to be sick.

  Someone roared on his right, and he turned to see Blue Jacket leap clumsily from a vehicle, down to the open ground between them. He scrabbled across the paving stones and raised his pistol towards Omin.

  The crack of a single shot once more filled the plaza, and Blue Jacket’s face disappeared. The body flopped forward under its own momentum, hitting the ground heavily.

  “Fuck you, Buddy.”

  Delanka rolled the body with his boot and pulled the pistol from its hand. He checked the civilian handgun over. “Here.” He offered it to Omin. “It’s not user-encoded. You can fire this one.”

  Omin took the gun. “Halfre…”

  “We’re here.”

  Halfre and the girl emerged from behind a low wall. Omin ran to them and threw his arms around both.

  “We need to shove off right now,” said Delanka. “We just made enough noise to bring Them here from the capital.”

  “The FOB then?” Omin said.

  “The FOB. Let’s just hope it’s still there.”

  With Delanka covering their rear they left the smouldering ruins behind, and set off on the road to Camillion.

  — 01 —

  Hammer

  Singularity is never an easy state. Mind, body, machine; all become one. In the twisted and churning throat of a wormhole, there is a moment in which thoughts become environment. Matter touches the mind, and flesh is extruded out into space it was never supposed to occupy. Small mercy then that the transitional jump experience lasts a mere instant, indelible and enduring as it might be in memory.

  Those who travel the gulf between the stars usually have one thing in common: they will gladly endure a single paradoxical instant of shattered unity, if not exactly acquire the taste. An infinitely unpleasant fraction of a second is a small price to pay for the opportunity to stride across eternity.

  With a groan of relief, ICS Hammer emerged into normal space. The wormhole waited obligingly for the battleship to drift clear of its aperture before evaporating silently into the void, shut down remotely from the other side. Fragments of hull plating travelled gracelessly with Hammer as she listed, tumbling alongside the great ship. They were prisoners of the momentum they had shared with her before being wrenched from her side by the tidal forces of the unbound wormhole. She let them go. A seasoned veteran, she was accustomed to the ravages of interstellar transit.

  She awoke. Formation lights blinked on and portholes regained their gentle glow. Her primary engines thundered into life as the main reactor emerged from hibernation, and her entire superstructure shuddered in ecstatic response. Hundreds of sensor palettes across her outer hull continued the private chatter that the wormhole had interrupted so abruptly. Hammer was becoming aware of her surroundings, sounding them out. She reached out and felt the shape of what was around her.

  There was not much to feel. Millions of kilometres away, a pale yellow star burned tirelessly, futilely showering its three barren planets with warmth. With no receiving gate to deliver the ship safely and precisely to a sterile area, Hammer had arrived outside the star system intentionally, far from any objects that might have dealt her a fatal blow. She reached out yet further, probing the interior of the star system, and diligently looked for a clear space near her destination. Another jump, vastly shorter and accordingly more accurate, would take her there only once her crew were satisfied that nothing ahead might endanger her arrival.

  On the command deck of the Hammer, Captain Aker Santani watched how the chattering chaos gave way to reason only with the greatest reluctance.

  Her command crew shouted to each other in clipped sentences; rapid bursts of raw information, free from the complications of grammar and conveying only pertinent facts or urgent demands, timed perfectly to fit between the blaring honks of system alarms. White emergency lighting cast the entire compartment in a crisp, vivid light, revealing each minute detail of everything it touched. Acrid smoke drifted low across the pale deck plating, thick and brown, curling around ankles and undulating as it fled the unseen electrical fire that had loosed it.

  “Report!”

  Santani called out in no particular direction, knowing full well that somebody would have the presence of mind to register the question and pass an orderly and comprehensive response.

  She had made over fourteen thousand jumps prior to this one, and she was frankly starting to get tired of the hysterical responses some officers exhibited when a few small pieces of the great ship fell off in transit, or when parts exploded without warning. Even the more seasoned officers seemed to be unnerved on this occasion. Santani had realised some time ago that her command staff were often so surprised, that on the whole it was better to throw a question wide open rather than query an individual who might not answer. Command, she had found after many long years, brought some funny little lessons with it.

  It was the COMOP officer who answered. Communications and Operations. Well, he ought to know after all.

  “Pulsar locks confirmed, resolving local stellar locks… arrival confirmed at target system.”

  “Status?”

  “No hostiles detected, Captain. We have fires contained on four decks. Two hull breaches: one isolated, one causing problems on deck four. Off-ship comms are down.”

  Well well. Detailed yet concise. Give the man a small medal.

  “What kind of problems? On deck four?”

  He swept two fingers across a holo display: invoke diagrammatic. “The emergency hatches in this section won’t close; fire took out a relay junction, so the breach was able to evacuate the air.” A pulsating red icon: touch to read. “Oh no… two missing, possibly spaced.”

  “Damn it all to the Deep!”

  Santani was never one to accept the loss of crew members easily. Now she was faced with the very real prospect that before their mission had even begun, two of her people had suffered one of the loneliest and most grisly deaths imaginable: blown out into space by the very air that was supposed to keep them alive.

  “Active sensors?”

  “Not picking up anything that looks like it might be a person,” the COMOP officer replied, “but then there’s always the possibility they didn’t leave the ship that way.”

  Santani grimaced as she realised his meaning. Presumably an explosion had been the cause of the breach. Had they been in the immediate vicinity at the time, then there was a good chance her missing crew members had left the ship in pieces. As good as the sensor resolution was on Hammer, it would take forever to check every potential object. Nevertheless, she hoped guiltily that they had suffered this quicker death
.

  “Get me a headcount at the earliest,” Santani said.

  “Ma’am,” he said, and turned back to his station.

  “We’ll hold position for repairs.” Again, she addressed the entire command deck. “I want a full report within the hour, and get him up here. I’d like to speak to him before he goes gallivanting off to Herros.”

  With a wave of her hand she dismissed her own holo from before her, and then arose from her chair. Moving with purpose, Santani walked briskly from her central position to the rear bulkhead of the command deck, opening the hatch which allowed immediate access to the wardroom. She stopped briefly to look back at the men and women who hurriedly worked to stabilise the injured Hammer.

  Young. That was her overall impression. Young in years, and young in service. The old days had slipped away. She could not be sure quite when it had happened, but it was evident in that so few of her crew from the old days had managed to remain with her. A transfer here, a retirement there. The occasional death, on duty or otherwise. Bit by bit, that was how it must have sneaked up on her. Gradually, over her many years, she had been dealt a worse hand than that which she was accustomed to playing.

  And now she was not only playing schoolmistress to these graduates, but also ferrying a Shard of the Empress.

  What was he, mid-thirties? Seemed about right. Not exactly fresh from the academy then, but to an old hand like her even the very best examples of the next generation would only ever be pimple-faced usurpers.

  They don’t know how good they have it these days, she thought. Not a clue.

  From what she had seen of his files — and that was admittedly not much, such were the requisite security levels for most of them — he was your typical operative of the Throne. Brusque, taciturn, and sometimes ruthlessly effective. She had widened her search to the logs made by other captains who had carried him from place to place, and found they had all said much the same thing: does not play well with others.

  If he thinks he’s dragging me into the hornets’ nest without knowing why, she smouldered, he’s got another think coming.

  Even the look of him annoyed her. He was just so… ordinary. Not at all what one would rightly expect when instructed to receive the living embodiment of Her Majesty’s will. His figure was nondescript, reasonably athletic but not in any sense muscular, and his face was plain. His dark hair was rather unimaginatively cropped short, and his eyes tended to the dull brown side of what could have been a captivating copper.