Operation Red Breath
prometheus110
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- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
15 October 3037, H-Hour -3
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carrier.
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carrier.
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carri-.
"Clear! I mean… Time! Fuck!" Came the stumbling cry from Marić, a roar of laughter and approval rising out of the darkness around Reza to buffet him like a leaf on the wind.
Sighing, Sergeant Reza Jalal slammed the last few parts of his rifle together before lifting the makeshift blindfold from his eyes, his vision blurring almost instantly at the brightness of the barracks-turned-arena. Blinking clear his vision, Reza spotted his opponent, Katarina Marić, cradling her newly assembled rifle; the newest member of Beta squad grinning like an idiot at the dragon's horde lying beside her.
"Good work for a newbie," he told the blonde trooper brightly, rising from his bunk with only a mild twinge in his back and shouldering his way through the slowly dispersing crowd to offer her a hand.
Shaking it graciously, Marić shrugged. "Thank you, sir. Benefits of training at Casius, I guess," she continued with more than a little exhaustion.
Inwardly, Reza grimaced. Army Training Centre Casius was notorious throughout the Republic for being located in the arse-end of nowhere; boot camp there offering none of even the minimal distractions present at other training centres. Most other soldiers Reza had met counted themselves lucky to avoid it and those that hadn't were more than willing to regale their comrades with story after story of the stupid shit people got up to during downtime. Frankly, Reza counted himself lucky that he'd been sent to ATC Karpathia --as far from Casius as it was possible to get while still on the same planet.
"My sympathies," he told her seriously before nodding to her winnings a moment later. "Any plans for that?"
The wiry newbie nodded. "Yah, I figured I'd go out in a blaze of glory," she replied dryly as she began sifting through the pile. "You know: live fast, die young."
"Of a heart attack?" He finished as she peered down at an item before shrugging.
"Hell yeah, sir," she replied, the trooper snapping open the packet with a flick of her wrist and the smell of cinnamon and sugar filling the air a moment later.
To the consternation of a great many of Reza's fellow soldiers, gambling for money had been banned throughout the Republic military decades ago; anyone found running a gambling ring, or even participating in one, liable to be NJPed by the officers the moment they found out --and they always found out. Often subjected to long periods of intense boredom with little else to do, Reza's illustrious band of brothers had finagled a compromise: desserts and snacks replacing hard currency. As a sergeant, it was stretching the regs for Reza to participate, but needs must and his needs were great --besides, he could always write it off as squad bonding.
Spying his target among the pile of snacks Marić won, Reza reached into his combat webbing and plucked a packet from his pocket.
"Here," he told her as he proffered the drab green package towards her. "I'll trade maple muffin tops for the Lifesavers."
"Why do you want them?" She asked, nonplussed. "Aren't they bad luck?"
"The fucking worst," he confirmed. "Garza in Alpha is the only squad lead who lets them on his dropship and he's crashed twice. Trust me, the only reason I want them is to trade."
Seeing her expression, Reza shot her a quizzical look. "You are new, huh?"
"Yah," she answered with a nod, the pack of Timbits forgotten in her hand. "Arrived on the last ship up, two weeks out of boot."
Pausing, Reza felt a wave of self-recrimination flash through him. My fault, he thought. We've been so busy...
"Alright," he sighed a moment later as he sank back down onto the bunk opposite; a twitch of his hand sending the proffered bag of muffin tops onto the pile by Marić's side. "Half motor pool loves the fucking things. You need an automata out of the shop ASAP, chuck 'em a bag or two of Lifesavers. They won't break regs, but they might see about moving it up a slot or two."
"Never, " he continued a moment later, "give the armoury Lifesavers; they'll think you're trying to kill them. It's salami sticks or nothing for them. That said, if you want to get your hands on any of the fucking things, you'll need to talk to me, Maryam in Bravo squad, or Vik-"
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour -2
Svetlana Li caught the engineer's body in her arms as it fell, the dead man crumpling silently as she guided him onto the ground; a wet warmth spreading across her belly as hot blood pumped from the knife wound in his back. It was midnight on Hurik, and a quiet one at that, and not even the power plant's guards could fail to hear the clatter a fall would make. Wiping her blade clean on the dead man's clothes, Svetlana cut the keycard from his waist and nodded to her partner.
"And that's number two," she commented glibly as she eyed the wallet-sized device; the thin plastic card, and its distant twin, holding the outcome of their mission in their hands.
Located in the heart of Victory City and responsible for providing power to much of the city, the PlanetGrid facility was essential to keeping Hurik's capital in working order; hundreds of thousands relying on it to power homes, trains, traffic lights, and more. So vital was the power plant, in fact, that it had taken Svetlana and her team months to identify a way to slip past its defences and months more to assemble the necessary items. Time, blood, and more MC Dollars than she was comfortable with had been spent to find the right sellers, but eventually, the Magistracy team had secured the IDs, and blueprints, they needed.
"Let's hope this works," grumbled the man known as Yang Jiong in Mandarin, his pale grey eyes holding steady on the end of the well-lit corridor. Dressed in a maintenance worker's gunmetal grey jumpsuit, the older man would be almost inconspicuous if it wasn't for the pistol he held at the ready; the slim black device seeming toy-like in his huge, wizened hands.
"You worry too much," Svetlana replied, "it'll work."
Before her partner, ever the dour man, could respond, Svetlana tapped the com-bead in her ear. "Target acquired," she whispered. "Alecto moving to join."
"Megaera acknowledges," came the reply a moment later. "Central secured."
Built more than a hundred years ago as a replacement for an older power plant, the PlanetGrid facility supplied Victory City with all the power it could ever need thanks to a trio of Gigawatt fission reactors; a six-month rolling maintenance cycle seeing one reactor taken offline and repaired while the other two shared the load. Vital to the city's smooth operation, located on a world bordering the edge of civilized space, and built during the succession wars, the PlanetGrid building was designed with orbital bombardment and sabotage in mind; meters of ferrocrete and armour plating covering the three massive fission reactors at the facility's heart and dozens of automated systems preventing any kind of overload, intentional or otherwise. At the time of the power plant's completion, the architects and engineers who had built it proudly boasted that their design would outlast Victory City itself.
It had taken Svetlana's team all of a week to figure out how to bring it down.
The fission reactors were untouchable: their radiation shielding too thick and heavily armoured, their management software too well designed and protected. Every possible attack had been anticipated by PlanetGrid's creators, every possible defence put into place. Any attempt to sabotage the reactors would end in failure… but the transformers were a different story.
Simpler to repair and simpler to replace, damage to the facility's forest of transformers, even extreme damage, could be repaired in a matter of weeks by PlanetGrid's army of trained engineers. Even the disruption caused by their destruction would be minimal compared to the loss of a reactor, outlying regions standing by to supply Victory City with power at a moment's notice; the last trial run restoring vital areas of the city to minimal functionality in under a day. With invaders required to burn for multiple days just to arrive in orbit and counter-sabotage plans ready to be put in to place the moment an enemy flare was detected, protection of the transformers played second fiddle to that of the reactors; the only thing that stood between an attacker and their management systems a door that required two keycards to open.
Pulling the pistol from its hiding place on her toolbelt, Svetlana gestured to her partner and rose to her feet. "Come on," she said as she racked the slide. "Let's go turn out the lights."
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour -1
In self-inflicted isolation at the head of the Durandal's observation deck, Captain Pavel Krupin starred out through the observation window at the constellation of cold stars spread out before him; a galaxy's worth of drive flares flickering against the flat black of space as countless ships manoeuvred into position above the system's primary. His hand resting against the port's armoured glass, Pavel could feel every shift and flex of the ship's spine as they happened, every pulse of the vessel's mighty engines as a particular vibration. With more than 4 year's service aboard the Durandal and a dozen in the fleet, Captain Krupin could read the ship's mood just as well as he could the mood of its crew, the sterile, metallic-scented air of the ship unmistakably tinged with the sharp taste of pre-battle nerves.
It's been eleven years, old girl, he told Durandal affably, but you've finally got a chance to show the galaxy what you can do. Let's make it count.
As if in answer, the ship's engines pulsed one last time and cut out; phantom vibrations running up Pavel's arm for a moment longer before fading away to nothing.
"You said it," muttered Pavel as he pulled his hand away and gave the stars one last look.
"Talking to the ship again, Captain?" Rumbled a voice from somewhere behind him, the slow drawl of a Portland accent incongruous against the bridge crew's clipped vowels. Turning, Pavel smiled slightly as he caught sight of Lieutenant Arjun Thind, his XO and right hand, standing behind him.
At six-feet tall with dark ochre skin and a perfectly groomed beard as black as coal, Thind could not have been any less like the primarily Helghan crew if he tried; the Portlander and devout Sikh the oldest of the Republic's new breed of up and coming officers. Standing straight as an arrow on the bridge of the Durandal with his hands behind his back and his long hair kept in place by a burnt-orange turban, Arjun returned the captain's smile and saluted smartly.
"Old sailor's superstition," Pavel replied lightly as he returned Thind's salute "You'll do it too when you have a ship of your own."
"Of course, Captain," Thind replied as unfazed as ever.
The pleasantries over and done with, Captain Krupin nodded toward the bank of elevators and set off, Thind hovering off his shoulder.
"I take it that we're ready to weigh anchor, Lieutenant?" The captain asked inside the elevator as he swiped at the control panel; the pointillist hologram for the bridge flashing green even as the gunmetal gray doors closed with a reassuring clunk.
Beside him, the dispassionate XO nodded as the elevator lurched into motion.
"Yes, Captain," Thind answered coolly. "Supply reports that all stores are locked down, Gunnery reports readiness on all weapons and magazines, and Engineering has given a green light on the hyperdrive.
"Doc Summers has once again requested that you don't give her anything to do, but has otherwise given sickbay her stamp of approval. All we're waiting on is the signal from High Command, though I expect it won't be long until we get it."
Pavel blinked. "Calling her 'doc' now, Thind?"
"Merely bowing to the inevitable, sir." Arjun conceded.
"It takes a smart man to recognize a losing fight," Pavel replied with a smile.
His XO nodded gravely. "Indeed, Captain."
Senior Medical Officer Helena Summers had arrived aboard the Durandal only a few months after Pavel had and had left her mark on the ship almost immediately. Replacing the old ship's SMO, Summers was career navy through and through and had worked her way up from the lowest rung of shipboard medical service to its highest. Effective, efficient, and irreverent, Summers refused to stand on protocol and insisted on being called 'Doc' by all; a personal foible that had clashed with Thind's punctilious nature from day one much to Krupin's bemused forbearance.
Lost in thought, Captain Krupin was jostled from his reverie by a sudden buzzing at his hip; the tablet at his side letting off the long double-dash vibration of an incoming message, Thind's letting off an identical buzz a moment later.
"Well," Pavel told his XO lightly as he scanned the text. "It seems you were right. We're at condition one in fifteen minutes."
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +0
Space above Hurik tore open in three places. For a nanosecond, anyone looking into the expanding rents would have perceived a Cherenkov blue star bright enough to blind. Then ships were streaking out into the void, their swordlike shapes bracketed by the blazing light of the system's primary as they began to burn away from their shared barycenter. Appearing 300,000 kilometres above the Mandate world, the arrival of the Republic ships did not go unnoticed by the planet's aerospace service; a host of LADAR, RADAR, and visual sensors scrutinising the trio of spacecraft as curt alerts were sent to all relevant parties.
Nothing happened for the first two minutes after the Republic vessels emerged save for the ships taking up a formation 100 kilometres apart. Both sides were searching for clues to see what the other was going to do and neither wanted to blink first. Colonel Jordan Cochrane of Hurik's Aerospace Command didn't know what to make of the interlopers' inaction. Years of service in the CCAF and the MAF had taught him that speed was of the essence in any aerospace attack and their latest threat was simply sitting there. The distance was also puzzling. Hurik's sensors might not have been the sharpest in the Inner Sphere, but they should have picked up the drive flares of the vessels long before they got within a Luna's distance of the planet. Erring on the side of caution, he informed Victory City to expect an attack.
The Republic's ships, having secured their beachhead, spent the two minutes peace analysing space around Hurik. Aside from the expected necklace of satellites and the handful of commercial dropships in orbit, there was little to concern the impending invasion force. Satisfied that no interception was forthcoming, Captain Rossi signalled to the fleet located a half-dozen light-years away that the region was clear. Moments later, ten stars flared into existence in the middle of Captain Rossi's defensive formation; a smorgasbord of starships flashing into existence over the course of a few seconds.
Admiral Victor Karloff was aboard the first ship that jumped into the Hurik system at Rossi's recommendation, the Hecatonchires sitting at the centre of the triangle described by the screening force like a brooding hen. Outfitted as a command vessel, the Hecatonchires' size permitted it to carry a full complement of tactical staff and provided them with a fully-fledged command centre independent of the vessel's own CIC and bridge. Though hardly a massive force, the eleven ships of Strike Group Cerberus still required coordination to fight at their best and there were few ships better suited to the task than the Hecatonchires.
As the last vessel warped into the Hurik system, Karloff's staff began organizing the Combat Air Patrols required to keep the valuable ships safe from harm. Over the course of a few minutes the three Damascus-class carriers assigned to the fleet, the Brahma, the Vishnu, and the Shiva, launched a total of 90 aerospace craft to provide cover; the small galaxy forming above Hurik driving the already alarmed Aerospace command centre into a frenzy and providing the planetary government with a small portent of what was to come. With the fleet having secured local space to a degree unseen since the height of the Succession Wars, Admiral Karloff gave the order to descend on the planet.
A little over thirteen light-years away, at almost the same moment the Hecatonchires' fusion drives ignited, space above the planet called Ward tore open in three places...
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +3
Karl's armoured suit made for a curious, bulbous shadow on the flagstones as he ran to new cover, the crack of each footstep almost as loud as the snap of bullets overhead. Ward's moon, Courage, was half-hidden by clouds, but the wide boulevard was almost day-bright thanks to his night vision gear. Karl knew he was presenting an easy target to the enemy hardpoint guarding the way ahead, but he trusted in his armour to keep him safe from small arms fire and his size to keep him safe from the heavier weapons.
Sliding into cover behind an overturned van, he dumped the empty magazine from his rifle with a flick of his thumb and slammed a new drum home. An instant later, a withering storm of machine-gun fire punched into the wreck, thumb-sized bullets penetrating the thin metal of the van's sides only to bounce off Karl's armour like marbles. Stupid of them, really. By way of education, a deep roar rang out from behind Karl and the machine gun suddenly fell silent, a victim of his squadmate's excellent aim.
Chancing a look, Karl peeked out from behind the wreck and ducked back as distant pops rang out.
"Enemy infantry still active, kameraden. Lightweights, not machineguns."
More pops, more dents. Karl rolled his eyes beneath his helmet at his squadmate's tardiness. This was the last time he would volunteer to be the rabbit.
"Any time now, Pritchard," drawled the Lieutenant over the radio, his cultured Pyrrus accent lending him the air of a bored man.
The response came quickly. "Sorry sir," Pritchard said sibilantly. "I see five. Firing now."
An instant later Pritchard's grenade launcher let loose a double cough, two grenade indicators flashing up on Karl's HUD as they sailed overhead before vanishing a moment later. For a split second there was silence save for the pop-pop-pop of enemy fire and then, without warning, the dull crump of an explosion.
"Hostiles eliminated," Pritchard reported proudly.
Peeking out from behind the van once more, Karl caught sight of the smoke pouring from the distant bunker's gunports and tilted his head in respect to Pritchard's skill. It would have been a challenging shot for him to launch a grenade through an open door at this distance, let alone through a crenulated gunport. He wouldn't tell Pritchard that, though. If the man's head got any bigger, he wouldn't be able to wear a helmet. Resolving to keep his thoughts to himself, Karl instead covered the boulevard as the rest of his unit advanced in leaps and bound; the clank of their power armour drowned out by the sounds of combat in the distance.
Halfway through their bounding advance up the boulevard, Lieutenant Novak called a halt; the men and women of Gamma platoon sidling up against abandoned cars and overturned food stalls in a quest for cover.
"Heads up, Gamma," Novak continued after a brief delay. "Goldman's people are taking over here. Enemy resistance at Xihoumen bridge is stiffer than expected, Command needs us to crack the nut ASAP."
Sending back an acknowledgement, Karl brought up a map of the AO with a series of blinks; a ghostly image of Ward's capital, First Landing, superimposed over his field of view.
Located three kilometres from their current position, Xihoumen bridge was one of the few intact routes over the river that bisected the capital, the 300-meter long ferrocrete structure built centuries ago to merge the planetary capital and the nearby city of Acheng. While not strictly necessary to use given the Republic's preponderance of airlift, securing it would greatly ease logistics burdens involved in supplying Republic forces, not to mention cut off one more escape route from the Mandate forces remaining on this side of the river.
"Ahh, scheiss," Karl muttered to himself as he realised how Novak planned to get there.
"Ready jetpacks, people," came the call a moment later, his worst fears confirmed.
Karl was not, by nature, a cowardly man nor was he a stranger to hardship. Growing up in the Maelstra region of Helghan during the latter parts of the civil war, Karl had experienced all manner of deprivations as a child; memories of afternoons spent waiting in line for too-little rations and of fitful sleep disturbed by the sound of distant warfare never far from his mind. Even after the civil war had ended and the revolutionary government had solidified its position, there was still hardship in his life. In places like Maelstra, criminals and fascists and fascist criminals had a way of causing trouble and Karl had had to crack more than a few heads in his youth.
Despite this, he still fucking hated the jetpacks. Hated the way they threw him through the air. Hated the way they made him a target. As far as he was concerned, he might as well ditch the armour and paint a target on his arse. Even so, he still checked his jetpack at the lieutenant's orders, patiently waiting for his turn to respond.
"Gamma-3 ready," he rattled off as his turn came around, an effort of will keeping the distaste from his voice.
Within a matter of moments, the rest of Karl's nine-person power armour unit had reported readiness. Stepping out from behind the overturned van, Karl oriented himself in roughly the right direction and primed his jetpack, a fuel meter fading into existence in the corner of his eye. In the corner of his eye, he spotted the rest of his unit doing the same, the bulbous shapes of Lieutenant Goldman's platoon advancing into position behind them.
"On my mark," crackled Novak's voice, "burn to the buildings and then head to bearing 090... Mark."
With a deafening scream, Karl's jump jets fired, light and smoke filling the boulevard in equal measure and banishing the darkness for meters around. With a stomach-churning lurch, the ground dropped away from his feet and the 400 kilo bulk of Karl's armour slashed through the air like a missile. In an instant, he was above the skyline and heading east, the flat roofs of the boulevard's commercial buildings racing past beneath his feet.
Burping once, the jump jets cut out and the acceleration that had pressed him down vanished. For a moment Karl hung above the flat roof of a building like the universe's largest clay pigeon before, with an equally stomach-churning sense of vertigo, he came crashing down on the roof accompanied by the crunch of asphalt beneath his armoured boots. Wired on adrenaline, Karl swept his rifle left and right across the roof, ignoring the green diamonds of the rest of his squad, and relaxed as he spied no targets. Letting his attention wander, Karl paused as he caught sight of the city.
First Landing splayed out before him like a carcass on a table, its streets and buildings dark save for the light of innumerable fires and the reflected flash of weapons fire; the former lending the scene a hellish air and the latter turning night into day in brief spurts. The city's power infrastructure, nothing to write home about already, had been one of the Republic's first targets; the Republic's air force dropping bomb after bomb after bomb on power plants, substations, and network nodes to hasten the collapse of Mandate forces. Dotting the southern half of the city seemingly at random, pillars of greasy black smoke rose into the sky, the onyx landmarks marking the location of hardpoints cracked open by bunker busters and other weapons. Even as he watched the tableau, a ball of fire the size of a house bloomed to his north; yellow and orange flames shooting up and out like a monstrous flower. A second passed, and then another, and then the explosion reached him; a single deep boom that shattered those few surviving windows nearby.
Hells they're fighting hard, Karl admitted to himself.
Outnumbered more than forty to one, The Mandate's troops in First Landing had been smashed aside by the Republic at every turn; airstrikes and artillery pinning them in place while armour and infantry demolished them. Compared to the might arrayed against them, the Mandate troops were nothing, but they fought to hold every meter of ground regardless. If they'd been fighting for something more than butchers, Karl might have found it within himself to respect them.
As Karl watched, another burning flower bloomed in the city's heart, the roiling mass of fire and smoke rising to his east. With a shake of his head, he dismissed his maudlin thoughts and readied himself for the next jump. Respect or not, Command needed the east bridge clear.
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +7
Letting out a loud groan, back clicking and chest burning, Reza sat down beside the burned-out hulk of the Manticore and stared out over the vast expanse of ferrocrete that was Victory City's spaceport. Everywhere he turned his gaze, he could see the mechanisms of the 4th army in motion; flights of aircraft hurtling through the air, swarms of dropships dropping much-needed supplies to the deck, and squads of troopers jogging to and fro. Like a kicked over ants nest, distant figures swarmed about the field, Hesco barriers and other fortifications taking shape before his eyes as Republic engineers assembled what had been swiftly dubbed Fort Kickass by Reza's comrades in arms.
He'd need to say his prayers soon, but it could wait a while yet. Besides, he'd left his sajjada in his rucksack.
Limbs weighed down by fatigue, Reza lifted the heavy helmet from his head and blinked in the strong light of Hurik's morning sun; a cool breeze ruffling his hair and bringing with it the scents of sweat, gunpowder, and burnt fuel. The fighting had been over for a good two hours now, Hurik's defences smashed apart by the Republic in a series of brutal fights, but the smell of war remained on the air. Breathing deep from the cool air, Reza was halfway to pulling out his tablet when a familiar voice called out.
"Hey sarge."
Glancing up, Reza nodded as he spied trooper Marić stepping out from behind the blacked wreck, her rifle slung over her shoulder and her helmet held in her hands. Like him, her black armour was coated in a thin layer of grey dust and her body language spoke of bone-deep exhaustion. Though the battle for the city had wrapped up hours ago, combat had a way of draining the energy from everyone involved; mind and body both wrung dry like a damp cloth.
"Good to see you made it out in one piece, Marić." He told her as she approached, the trooper blocking out the sunlight as she stood before him.
The blonde woman shrugged. "I followed your instructions. Seemed to do the trick."
Letting out a warm chuckle, Reza winced as pain shot across his chest like fire.
"You alright, sir?"
Waving down her concern, Reza smiled ruefully. "Just a bruise," he told the trooper. "I didn't follow my own advice and caught a slug to the chest. Plate stopped it, but it stings like a real bastard."
"Ooff," she replied, dryly enunciating the sound. "Still, you lived."
"I did," he agreed. "It'll take more than some dumbass with a rifle to kill me."
The conversation stalled there, the older sergeant looking up at the trooper from the ground. Something about her seemed… off. Unbalanced. Uncertain. Reza suspected he knew what. A long moment passed and, with a jerk of his head, he indicated the ground next to him.
"Come on, sit down," he told her. "My neck's getting a cramp looking up all the time," he continued after she made no effort to move.
Breathing out a noncommittal noise, Marić nonetheless obeyed his instruction, the young woman carefully placing her helmet on the ground before pulling her rifle off her shoulder and dropping down beside him with a heavy clatter. Reza let her get settled for a second, the trooper giving off a nervous energy that matched that of the spaceport.
"There's something bothering you." He stated. It wasn't a question.
"Yah. No. Maybe?"
Helpful, a thoroughly useless part of Reza's mind commented before being quashed.
"What's up?" He prodded carefully. He might not have been old in civilian terms, but Reza had been in the army long enough to get a sense of when things were wrong and when directness was less helpful than obliqueness. Push too softly and she wouldn't cut to the meat of the issue, push too hard and she would disengage entirely.
He took a risk. "Something happen in the field, Marić?"
She stiffened suddenly, then nodded.
"Shot someone," she said, her voice flat.
Reza nodded. He'd read the after-action reports, written some of them too, and seen the bodycam footage. He knew which members of the platoon had killed and how many times. They'd been in the rough for a while and Marić had shot more than one person.
"Who?" he asked sympathetically.
In the distance, far from the rapidly growing shape of Fort Kickass, a Union class dropship was descending through the atmosphere on a pillar of fusion flame, the glare of its rocket engine fighting with the sunlight to cast strange double shadows across the spaceport's tarmac. Though far away, the Taurian bull was clearly visible on its flank.
Marić sighed. "I don't know. Some kid," she corrected a moment later.
Ahh, he thought. This.
The Mandate regulars had fought like lions to defend Hurik from ORDI forces despite unit after unit being smashed apart like so much spun glass. They'd eventually surrendered, but it'd taken a good while to convince them that they should, Republic and Taurian mech forces wiping out a good 60% of the Mandate's own before the white flag was raised. Reza had few qualms about fighting the regulars, they were professional soldiers like him, after all, but the planetary militia was a somewhat different story.
With a population of more than a billion people, Hurik had a significant militia compared to those of the Periphery; a force augmented significantly in recent years in response to the Republic's claims of Mandate involvement in the attacks on Helghan. Though mostly composed of military-aged adults, Reza had heard of, and seen, younger members being marched in columns to the hastily assembled POW camps south of the city. Some of them had been on the wrong side of the line demarcating childhood and adulthood.
"Want to talk about it?"
She nodded robotically.
"Not a lot to say, really," she began. "It was at the intersection. When that mech dragged the PA guys away."
Reza nodded. It had been a tense moment when the Phoenix Hawk appeared leading a mechanized charge. Shit had flown in all directions and it was only thanks to the power armour troops that they'd avoid getting mulched by mech machine guns.
"Don't even know if he was a kid, to be honest." Marić jumped ahead with a shrug. "I saw him lining up a shot on Miklos and got him first on instinct. Didn't think about it at the time, but when we were sweeping through later I saw him and he looked like a kid."
The blonde trooper ground to a halt, her voice hoarse.
"Well," Reza said. "Fuck."
"Yah, fuck," she agreed.
Another long pause. The Taurian dropship passed out of sight as it landed.
"Your instincts were right," he said with certainty. "For what it's worth."
They sat together in silence for a while, young and old deep in thought.
"We probably should be heading back."
"Yah, sarge."
"The others are probably screwing around."
"Yah, sarge."
"Marić?"
"Yah, sarge?"
"Mind helping an old man up?"
"...Yah, sarge."
===========================
In something of an anti-climax, Republic forces have triumphed in their efforts to conquer the worlds of Hurik and Ward despite the best efforts of Celestial Mandate forces; initial resistance collapsing after only a few hours of combat. Though guarded by multiple MAF regiments supported by militia, the forces arrayed against the ORDI proved no match for the alliance's sheer superiority in all aspects of warfare. Accompanied by elements from the Magistracy of Canopus, the Taurian Concordat, and the Aurigan Coalition, the three Republic armies assigned to Operation Red Breath crashed down upon Hurik and Ward like waves on a beach, 150,000 troops plus air support, armour and mechs bulldozing everything in their path on both worlds.
Launched in late November to maximise preparation opportunities, the operation experienced few issues with supplies thanks to the cautious actions of the Republic a year prior and came as a complete surprise to the Mandate's ruling council as a result of disinformation activities. In addition, though doubtlessly bound to succeed due to the sheer scale of the forces involved, Aurigan and Magistracy sabotage actions proved vital in disrupting the Mandate's ability to fight back; numerous ammo caches destroyed by time-delayed thermite charges and the main power plant of Hurik's capital disabled by members of MIM in the hours before the invasion. Though the Mandate had succeeded in completing some fortifications which, in turn, succeeded in slowing down the Republic's advance across both planets, delays caused by sabotage ensured that most of the planned works remained safely in the minds of their designers.
Though many suspected that the Mandate might respond to Red Breath by dispatching additional forces or else launching a counter-invasion, the rapid conquest of Hurik and Ward seems to have either stunned the authoritarian nation into inaction or else convinced it that a war would not be in its best interests; days turning into weeks turning into months without sign of a response. While the Mandate has thus far refrained from declaring war on the Republic, reports from within the nation indicate that it is busy pulling a large number of forces from its spinward and anti-spinward borders to reinforce its southern borders. In addition, reports from agents embedded throughout the southern reaches have revealed that the Mandate is rapidly ramping up its fortification efforts, simultaneously expanding the use of forced labour in the construction effort to a massive degree. While there have thus far been few signs of an expansion in anti-subversive activities by the Maskirovka, Republic agents have taken the precaution of going to ground wherever possible.
In terms of casualties, Operation Red Breath saw 132 ORDI personnel killed during combat with an additional 407 wounded. The Mandate, meanwhile, suffered a total of 540 killed and 1720 wounded. Surviving Mandate forces, having since surrendered, are currently interned in POW camps pending release back to the Mandate. As for the civilian population, estimates on total casualties are difficult to produce, however, it's estimated that fewer than 100 civilians were killed in the brief conflict with an unknown number injured --the low number of deaths largely due to the civilian population of both planets taking shelter when it became apparent the ORDI was invading. In addition, both planets are currently under martial law managed by Republic troops pending their transfer to the Aurigan Coalition.
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carrier.
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carrier.
Pull bolt. Push-in pin. Push charging handle. Slide in bolt carrier. Combine charging handle and bolt carri-.
"Clear! I mean… Time! Fuck!" Came the stumbling cry from Marić, a roar of laughter and approval rising out of the darkness around Reza to buffet him like a leaf on the wind.
Sighing, Sergeant Reza Jalal slammed the last few parts of his rifle together before lifting the makeshift blindfold from his eyes, his vision blurring almost instantly at the brightness of the barracks-turned-arena. Blinking clear his vision, Reza spotted his opponent, Katarina Marić, cradling her newly assembled rifle; the newest member of Beta squad grinning like an idiot at the dragon's horde lying beside her.
"Good work for a newbie," he told the blonde trooper brightly, rising from his bunk with only a mild twinge in his back and shouldering his way through the slowly dispersing crowd to offer her a hand.
Shaking it graciously, Marić shrugged. "Thank you, sir. Benefits of training at Casius, I guess," she continued with more than a little exhaustion.
Inwardly, Reza grimaced. Army Training Centre Casius was notorious throughout the Republic for being located in the arse-end of nowhere; boot camp there offering none of even the minimal distractions present at other training centres. Most other soldiers Reza had met counted themselves lucky to avoid it and those that hadn't were more than willing to regale their comrades with story after story of the stupid shit people got up to during downtime. Frankly, Reza counted himself lucky that he'd been sent to ATC Karpathia --as far from Casius as it was possible to get while still on the same planet.
"My sympathies," he told her seriously before nodding to her winnings a moment later. "Any plans for that?"
The wiry newbie nodded. "Yah, I figured I'd go out in a blaze of glory," she replied dryly as she began sifting through the pile. "You know: live fast, die young."
"Of a heart attack?" He finished as she peered down at an item before shrugging.
"Hell yeah, sir," she replied, the trooper snapping open the packet with a flick of her wrist and the smell of cinnamon and sugar filling the air a moment later.
To the consternation of a great many of Reza's fellow soldiers, gambling for money had been banned throughout the Republic military decades ago; anyone found running a gambling ring, or even participating in one, liable to be NJPed by the officers the moment they found out --and they always found out. Often subjected to long periods of intense boredom with little else to do, Reza's illustrious band of brothers had finagled a compromise: desserts and snacks replacing hard currency. As a sergeant, it was stretching the regs for Reza to participate, but needs must and his needs were great --besides, he could always write it off as squad bonding.
Spying his target among the pile of snacks Marić won, Reza reached into his combat webbing and plucked a packet from his pocket.
"Here," he told her as he proffered the drab green package towards her. "I'll trade maple muffin tops for the Lifesavers."
"Why do you want them?" She asked, nonplussed. "Aren't they bad luck?"
"The fucking worst," he confirmed. "Garza in Alpha is the only squad lead who lets them on his dropship and he's crashed twice. Trust me, the only reason I want them is to trade."
Seeing her expression, Reza shot her a quizzical look. "You are new, huh?"
"Yah," she answered with a nod, the pack of Timbits forgotten in her hand. "Arrived on the last ship up, two weeks out of boot."
Pausing, Reza felt a wave of self-recrimination flash through him. My fault, he thought. We've been so busy...
"Alright," he sighed a moment later as he sank back down onto the bunk opposite; a twitch of his hand sending the proffered bag of muffin tops onto the pile by Marić's side. "Half motor pool loves the fucking things. You need an automata out of the shop ASAP, chuck 'em a bag or two of Lifesavers. They won't break regs, but they might see about moving it up a slot or two."
"Never, " he continued a moment later, "give the armoury Lifesavers; they'll think you're trying to kill them. It's salami sticks or nothing for them. That said, if you want to get your hands on any of the fucking things, you'll need to talk to me, Maryam in Bravo squad, or Vik-"
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour -2
Svetlana Li caught the engineer's body in her arms as it fell, the dead man crumpling silently as she guided him onto the ground; a wet warmth spreading across her belly as hot blood pumped from the knife wound in his back. It was midnight on Hurik, and a quiet one at that, and not even the power plant's guards could fail to hear the clatter a fall would make. Wiping her blade clean on the dead man's clothes, Svetlana cut the keycard from his waist and nodded to her partner.
"And that's number two," she commented glibly as she eyed the wallet-sized device; the thin plastic card, and its distant twin, holding the outcome of their mission in their hands.
Located in the heart of Victory City and responsible for providing power to much of the city, the PlanetGrid facility was essential to keeping Hurik's capital in working order; hundreds of thousands relying on it to power homes, trains, traffic lights, and more. So vital was the power plant, in fact, that it had taken Svetlana and her team months to identify a way to slip past its defences and months more to assemble the necessary items. Time, blood, and more MC Dollars than she was comfortable with had been spent to find the right sellers, but eventually, the Magistracy team had secured the IDs, and blueprints, they needed.
"Let's hope this works," grumbled the man known as Yang Jiong in Mandarin, his pale grey eyes holding steady on the end of the well-lit corridor. Dressed in a maintenance worker's gunmetal grey jumpsuit, the older man would be almost inconspicuous if it wasn't for the pistol he held at the ready; the slim black device seeming toy-like in his huge, wizened hands.
"You worry too much," Svetlana replied, "it'll work."
Before her partner, ever the dour man, could respond, Svetlana tapped the com-bead in her ear. "Target acquired," she whispered. "Alecto moving to join."
"Megaera acknowledges," came the reply a moment later. "Central secured."
Built more than a hundred years ago as a replacement for an older power plant, the PlanetGrid facility supplied Victory City with all the power it could ever need thanks to a trio of Gigawatt fission reactors; a six-month rolling maintenance cycle seeing one reactor taken offline and repaired while the other two shared the load. Vital to the city's smooth operation, located on a world bordering the edge of civilized space, and built during the succession wars, the PlanetGrid building was designed with orbital bombardment and sabotage in mind; meters of ferrocrete and armour plating covering the three massive fission reactors at the facility's heart and dozens of automated systems preventing any kind of overload, intentional or otherwise. At the time of the power plant's completion, the architects and engineers who had built it proudly boasted that their design would outlast Victory City itself.
It had taken Svetlana's team all of a week to figure out how to bring it down.
The fission reactors were untouchable: their radiation shielding too thick and heavily armoured, their management software too well designed and protected. Every possible attack had been anticipated by PlanetGrid's creators, every possible defence put into place. Any attempt to sabotage the reactors would end in failure… but the transformers were a different story.
Simpler to repair and simpler to replace, damage to the facility's forest of transformers, even extreme damage, could be repaired in a matter of weeks by PlanetGrid's army of trained engineers. Even the disruption caused by their destruction would be minimal compared to the loss of a reactor, outlying regions standing by to supply Victory City with power at a moment's notice; the last trial run restoring vital areas of the city to minimal functionality in under a day. With invaders required to burn for multiple days just to arrive in orbit and counter-sabotage plans ready to be put in to place the moment an enemy flare was detected, protection of the transformers played second fiddle to that of the reactors; the only thing that stood between an attacker and their management systems a door that required two keycards to open.
Pulling the pistol from its hiding place on her toolbelt, Svetlana gestured to her partner and rose to her feet. "Come on," she said as she racked the slide. "Let's go turn out the lights."
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour -1
In self-inflicted isolation at the head of the Durandal's observation deck, Captain Pavel Krupin starred out through the observation window at the constellation of cold stars spread out before him; a galaxy's worth of drive flares flickering against the flat black of space as countless ships manoeuvred into position above the system's primary. His hand resting against the port's armoured glass, Pavel could feel every shift and flex of the ship's spine as they happened, every pulse of the vessel's mighty engines as a particular vibration. With more than 4 year's service aboard the Durandal and a dozen in the fleet, Captain Krupin could read the ship's mood just as well as he could the mood of its crew, the sterile, metallic-scented air of the ship unmistakably tinged with the sharp taste of pre-battle nerves.
It's been eleven years, old girl, he told Durandal affably, but you've finally got a chance to show the galaxy what you can do. Let's make it count.
As if in answer, the ship's engines pulsed one last time and cut out; phantom vibrations running up Pavel's arm for a moment longer before fading away to nothing.
"You said it," muttered Pavel as he pulled his hand away and gave the stars one last look.
"Talking to the ship again, Captain?" Rumbled a voice from somewhere behind him, the slow drawl of a Portland accent incongruous against the bridge crew's clipped vowels. Turning, Pavel smiled slightly as he caught sight of Lieutenant Arjun Thind, his XO and right hand, standing behind him.
At six-feet tall with dark ochre skin and a perfectly groomed beard as black as coal, Thind could not have been any less like the primarily Helghan crew if he tried; the Portlander and devout Sikh the oldest of the Republic's new breed of up and coming officers. Standing straight as an arrow on the bridge of the Durandal with his hands behind his back and his long hair kept in place by a burnt-orange turban, Arjun returned the captain's smile and saluted smartly.
"Old sailor's superstition," Pavel replied lightly as he returned Thind's salute "You'll do it too when you have a ship of your own."
"Of course, Captain," Thind replied as unfazed as ever.
The pleasantries over and done with, Captain Krupin nodded toward the bank of elevators and set off, Thind hovering off his shoulder.
"I take it that we're ready to weigh anchor, Lieutenant?" The captain asked inside the elevator as he swiped at the control panel; the pointillist hologram for the bridge flashing green even as the gunmetal gray doors closed with a reassuring clunk.
Beside him, the dispassionate XO nodded as the elevator lurched into motion.
"Yes, Captain," Thind answered coolly. "Supply reports that all stores are locked down, Gunnery reports readiness on all weapons and magazines, and Engineering has given a green light on the hyperdrive.
"Doc Summers has once again requested that you don't give her anything to do, but has otherwise given sickbay her stamp of approval. All we're waiting on is the signal from High Command, though I expect it won't be long until we get it."
Pavel blinked. "Calling her 'doc' now, Thind?"
"Merely bowing to the inevitable, sir." Arjun conceded.
"It takes a smart man to recognize a losing fight," Pavel replied with a smile.
His XO nodded gravely. "Indeed, Captain."
Senior Medical Officer Helena Summers had arrived aboard the Durandal only a few months after Pavel had and had left her mark on the ship almost immediately. Replacing the old ship's SMO, Summers was career navy through and through and had worked her way up from the lowest rung of shipboard medical service to its highest. Effective, efficient, and irreverent, Summers refused to stand on protocol and insisted on being called 'Doc' by all; a personal foible that had clashed with Thind's punctilious nature from day one much to Krupin's bemused forbearance.
Lost in thought, Captain Krupin was jostled from his reverie by a sudden buzzing at his hip; the tablet at his side letting off the long double-dash vibration of an incoming message, Thind's letting off an identical buzz a moment later.
"Well," Pavel told his XO lightly as he scanned the text. "It seems you were right. We're at condition one in fifteen minutes."
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +0
Space above Hurik tore open in three places. For a nanosecond, anyone looking into the expanding rents would have perceived a Cherenkov blue star bright enough to blind. Then ships were streaking out into the void, their swordlike shapes bracketed by the blazing light of the system's primary as they began to burn away from their shared barycenter. Appearing 300,000 kilometres above the Mandate world, the arrival of the Republic ships did not go unnoticed by the planet's aerospace service; a host of LADAR, RADAR, and visual sensors scrutinising the trio of spacecraft as curt alerts were sent to all relevant parties.
Nothing happened for the first two minutes after the Republic vessels emerged save for the ships taking up a formation 100 kilometres apart. Both sides were searching for clues to see what the other was going to do and neither wanted to blink first. Colonel Jordan Cochrane of Hurik's Aerospace Command didn't know what to make of the interlopers' inaction. Years of service in the CCAF and the MAF had taught him that speed was of the essence in any aerospace attack and their latest threat was simply sitting there. The distance was also puzzling. Hurik's sensors might not have been the sharpest in the Inner Sphere, but they should have picked up the drive flares of the vessels long before they got within a Luna's distance of the planet. Erring on the side of caution, he informed Victory City to expect an attack.
The Republic's ships, having secured their beachhead, spent the two minutes peace analysing space around Hurik. Aside from the expected necklace of satellites and the handful of commercial dropships in orbit, there was little to concern the impending invasion force. Satisfied that no interception was forthcoming, Captain Rossi signalled to the fleet located a half-dozen light-years away that the region was clear. Moments later, ten stars flared into existence in the middle of Captain Rossi's defensive formation; a smorgasbord of starships flashing into existence over the course of a few seconds.
Admiral Victor Karloff was aboard the first ship that jumped into the Hurik system at Rossi's recommendation, the Hecatonchires sitting at the centre of the triangle described by the screening force like a brooding hen. Outfitted as a command vessel, the Hecatonchires' size permitted it to carry a full complement of tactical staff and provided them with a fully-fledged command centre independent of the vessel's own CIC and bridge. Though hardly a massive force, the eleven ships of Strike Group Cerberus still required coordination to fight at their best and there were few ships better suited to the task than the Hecatonchires.
As the last vessel warped into the Hurik system, Karloff's staff began organizing the Combat Air Patrols required to keep the valuable ships safe from harm. Over the course of a few minutes the three Damascus-class carriers assigned to the fleet, the Brahma, the Vishnu, and the Shiva, launched a total of 90 aerospace craft to provide cover; the small galaxy forming above Hurik driving the already alarmed Aerospace command centre into a frenzy and providing the planetary government with a small portent of what was to come. With the fleet having secured local space to a degree unseen since the height of the Succession Wars, Admiral Karloff gave the order to descend on the planet.
A little over thirteen light-years away, at almost the same moment the Hecatonchires' fusion drives ignited, space above the planet called Ward tore open in three places...
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +3
Karl's armoured suit made for a curious, bulbous shadow on the flagstones as he ran to new cover, the crack of each footstep almost as loud as the snap of bullets overhead. Ward's moon, Courage, was half-hidden by clouds, but the wide boulevard was almost day-bright thanks to his night vision gear. Karl knew he was presenting an easy target to the enemy hardpoint guarding the way ahead, but he trusted in his armour to keep him safe from small arms fire and his size to keep him safe from the heavier weapons.
Sliding into cover behind an overturned van, he dumped the empty magazine from his rifle with a flick of his thumb and slammed a new drum home. An instant later, a withering storm of machine-gun fire punched into the wreck, thumb-sized bullets penetrating the thin metal of the van's sides only to bounce off Karl's armour like marbles. Stupid of them, really. By way of education, a deep roar rang out from behind Karl and the machine gun suddenly fell silent, a victim of his squadmate's excellent aim.
Chancing a look, Karl peeked out from behind the wreck and ducked back as distant pops rang out.
"Enemy infantry still active, kameraden. Lightweights, not machineguns."
More pops, more dents. Karl rolled his eyes beneath his helmet at his squadmate's tardiness. This was the last time he would volunteer to be the rabbit.
"Any time now, Pritchard," drawled the Lieutenant over the radio, his cultured Pyrrus accent lending him the air of a bored man.
The response came quickly. "Sorry sir," Pritchard said sibilantly. "I see five. Firing now."
An instant later Pritchard's grenade launcher let loose a double cough, two grenade indicators flashing up on Karl's HUD as they sailed overhead before vanishing a moment later. For a split second there was silence save for the pop-pop-pop of enemy fire and then, without warning, the dull crump of an explosion.
"Hostiles eliminated," Pritchard reported proudly.
Peeking out from behind the van once more, Karl caught sight of the smoke pouring from the distant bunker's gunports and tilted his head in respect to Pritchard's skill. It would have been a challenging shot for him to launch a grenade through an open door at this distance, let alone through a crenulated gunport. He wouldn't tell Pritchard that, though. If the man's head got any bigger, he wouldn't be able to wear a helmet. Resolving to keep his thoughts to himself, Karl instead covered the boulevard as the rest of his unit advanced in leaps and bound; the clank of their power armour drowned out by the sounds of combat in the distance.
Halfway through their bounding advance up the boulevard, Lieutenant Novak called a halt; the men and women of Gamma platoon sidling up against abandoned cars and overturned food stalls in a quest for cover.
"Heads up, Gamma," Novak continued after a brief delay. "Goldman's people are taking over here. Enemy resistance at Xihoumen bridge is stiffer than expected, Command needs us to crack the nut ASAP."
Sending back an acknowledgement, Karl brought up a map of the AO with a series of blinks; a ghostly image of Ward's capital, First Landing, superimposed over his field of view.
Located three kilometres from their current position, Xihoumen bridge was one of the few intact routes over the river that bisected the capital, the 300-meter long ferrocrete structure built centuries ago to merge the planetary capital and the nearby city of Acheng. While not strictly necessary to use given the Republic's preponderance of airlift, securing it would greatly ease logistics burdens involved in supplying Republic forces, not to mention cut off one more escape route from the Mandate forces remaining on this side of the river.
"Ahh, scheiss," Karl muttered to himself as he realised how Novak planned to get there.
"Ready jetpacks, people," came the call a moment later, his worst fears confirmed.
Karl was not, by nature, a cowardly man nor was he a stranger to hardship. Growing up in the Maelstra region of Helghan during the latter parts of the civil war, Karl had experienced all manner of deprivations as a child; memories of afternoons spent waiting in line for too-little rations and of fitful sleep disturbed by the sound of distant warfare never far from his mind. Even after the civil war had ended and the revolutionary government had solidified its position, there was still hardship in his life. In places like Maelstra, criminals and fascists and fascist criminals had a way of causing trouble and Karl had had to crack more than a few heads in his youth.
Despite this, he still fucking hated the jetpacks. Hated the way they threw him through the air. Hated the way they made him a target. As far as he was concerned, he might as well ditch the armour and paint a target on his arse. Even so, he still checked his jetpack at the lieutenant's orders, patiently waiting for his turn to respond.
"Gamma-3 ready," he rattled off as his turn came around, an effort of will keeping the distaste from his voice.
Within a matter of moments, the rest of Karl's nine-person power armour unit had reported readiness. Stepping out from behind the overturned van, Karl oriented himself in roughly the right direction and primed his jetpack, a fuel meter fading into existence in the corner of his eye. In the corner of his eye, he spotted the rest of his unit doing the same, the bulbous shapes of Lieutenant Goldman's platoon advancing into position behind them.
"On my mark," crackled Novak's voice, "burn to the buildings and then head to bearing 090... Mark."
With a deafening scream, Karl's jump jets fired, light and smoke filling the boulevard in equal measure and banishing the darkness for meters around. With a stomach-churning lurch, the ground dropped away from his feet and the 400 kilo bulk of Karl's armour slashed through the air like a missile. In an instant, he was above the skyline and heading east, the flat roofs of the boulevard's commercial buildings racing past beneath his feet.
Burping once, the jump jets cut out and the acceleration that had pressed him down vanished. For a moment Karl hung above the flat roof of a building like the universe's largest clay pigeon before, with an equally stomach-churning sense of vertigo, he came crashing down on the roof accompanied by the crunch of asphalt beneath his armoured boots. Wired on adrenaline, Karl swept his rifle left and right across the roof, ignoring the green diamonds of the rest of his squad, and relaxed as he spied no targets. Letting his attention wander, Karl paused as he caught sight of the city.
First Landing splayed out before him like a carcass on a table, its streets and buildings dark save for the light of innumerable fires and the reflected flash of weapons fire; the former lending the scene a hellish air and the latter turning night into day in brief spurts. The city's power infrastructure, nothing to write home about already, had been one of the Republic's first targets; the Republic's air force dropping bomb after bomb after bomb on power plants, substations, and network nodes to hasten the collapse of Mandate forces. Dotting the southern half of the city seemingly at random, pillars of greasy black smoke rose into the sky, the onyx landmarks marking the location of hardpoints cracked open by bunker busters and other weapons. Even as he watched the tableau, a ball of fire the size of a house bloomed to his north; yellow and orange flames shooting up and out like a monstrous flower. A second passed, and then another, and then the explosion reached him; a single deep boom that shattered those few surviving windows nearby.
Hells they're fighting hard, Karl admitted to himself.
Outnumbered more than forty to one, The Mandate's troops in First Landing had been smashed aside by the Republic at every turn; airstrikes and artillery pinning them in place while armour and infantry demolished them. Compared to the might arrayed against them, the Mandate troops were nothing, but they fought to hold every meter of ground regardless. If they'd been fighting for something more than butchers, Karl might have found it within himself to respect them.
As Karl watched, another burning flower bloomed in the city's heart, the roiling mass of fire and smoke rising to his east. With a shake of his head, he dismissed his maudlin thoughts and readied himself for the next jump. Respect or not, Command needed the east bridge clear.
===========================
15 October 3037, H-Hour +7
Letting out a loud groan, back clicking and chest burning, Reza sat down beside the burned-out hulk of the Manticore and stared out over the vast expanse of ferrocrete that was Victory City's spaceport. Everywhere he turned his gaze, he could see the mechanisms of the 4th army in motion; flights of aircraft hurtling through the air, swarms of dropships dropping much-needed supplies to the deck, and squads of troopers jogging to and fro. Like a kicked over ants nest, distant figures swarmed about the field, Hesco barriers and other fortifications taking shape before his eyes as Republic engineers assembled what had been swiftly dubbed Fort Kickass by Reza's comrades in arms.
He'd need to say his prayers soon, but it could wait a while yet. Besides, he'd left his sajjada in his rucksack.
Limbs weighed down by fatigue, Reza lifted the heavy helmet from his head and blinked in the strong light of Hurik's morning sun; a cool breeze ruffling his hair and bringing with it the scents of sweat, gunpowder, and burnt fuel. The fighting had been over for a good two hours now, Hurik's defences smashed apart by the Republic in a series of brutal fights, but the smell of war remained on the air. Breathing deep from the cool air, Reza was halfway to pulling out his tablet when a familiar voice called out.
"Hey sarge."
Glancing up, Reza nodded as he spied trooper Marić stepping out from behind the blacked wreck, her rifle slung over her shoulder and her helmet held in her hands. Like him, her black armour was coated in a thin layer of grey dust and her body language spoke of bone-deep exhaustion. Though the battle for the city had wrapped up hours ago, combat had a way of draining the energy from everyone involved; mind and body both wrung dry like a damp cloth.
"Good to see you made it out in one piece, Marić." He told her as she approached, the trooper blocking out the sunlight as she stood before him.
The blonde woman shrugged. "I followed your instructions. Seemed to do the trick."
Letting out a warm chuckle, Reza winced as pain shot across his chest like fire.
"You alright, sir?"
Waving down her concern, Reza smiled ruefully. "Just a bruise," he told the trooper. "I didn't follow my own advice and caught a slug to the chest. Plate stopped it, but it stings like a real bastard."
"Ooff," she replied, dryly enunciating the sound. "Still, you lived."
"I did," he agreed. "It'll take more than some dumbass with a rifle to kill me."
The conversation stalled there, the older sergeant looking up at the trooper from the ground. Something about her seemed… off. Unbalanced. Uncertain. Reza suspected he knew what. A long moment passed and, with a jerk of his head, he indicated the ground next to him.
"Come on, sit down," he told her. "My neck's getting a cramp looking up all the time," he continued after she made no effort to move.
Breathing out a noncommittal noise, Marić nonetheless obeyed his instruction, the young woman carefully placing her helmet on the ground before pulling her rifle off her shoulder and dropping down beside him with a heavy clatter. Reza let her get settled for a second, the trooper giving off a nervous energy that matched that of the spaceport.
"There's something bothering you." He stated. It wasn't a question.
"Yah. No. Maybe?"
Helpful, a thoroughly useless part of Reza's mind commented before being quashed.
"What's up?" He prodded carefully. He might not have been old in civilian terms, but Reza had been in the army long enough to get a sense of when things were wrong and when directness was less helpful than obliqueness. Push too softly and she wouldn't cut to the meat of the issue, push too hard and she would disengage entirely.
He took a risk. "Something happen in the field, Marić?"
She stiffened suddenly, then nodded.
"Shot someone," she said, her voice flat.
Reza nodded. He'd read the after-action reports, written some of them too, and seen the bodycam footage. He knew which members of the platoon had killed and how many times. They'd been in the rough for a while and Marić had shot more than one person.
"Who?" he asked sympathetically.
In the distance, far from the rapidly growing shape of Fort Kickass, a Union class dropship was descending through the atmosphere on a pillar of fusion flame, the glare of its rocket engine fighting with the sunlight to cast strange double shadows across the spaceport's tarmac. Though far away, the Taurian bull was clearly visible on its flank.
Marić sighed. "I don't know. Some kid," she corrected a moment later.
Ahh, he thought. This.
The Mandate regulars had fought like lions to defend Hurik from ORDI forces despite unit after unit being smashed apart like so much spun glass. They'd eventually surrendered, but it'd taken a good while to convince them that they should, Republic and Taurian mech forces wiping out a good 60% of the Mandate's own before the white flag was raised. Reza had few qualms about fighting the regulars, they were professional soldiers like him, after all, but the planetary militia was a somewhat different story.
With a population of more than a billion people, Hurik had a significant militia compared to those of the Periphery; a force augmented significantly in recent years in response to the Republic's claims of Mandate involvement in the attacks on Helghan. Though mostly composed of military-aged adults, Reza had heard of, and seen, younger members being marched in columns to the hastily assembled POW camps south of the city. Some of them had been on the wrong side of the line demarcating childhood and adulthood.
"Want to talk about it?"
She nodded robotically.
"Not a lot to say, really," she began. "It was at the intersection. When that mech dragged the PA guys away."
Reza nodded. It had been a tense moment when the Phoenix Hawk appeared leading a mechanized charge. Shit had flown in all directions and it was only thanks to the power armour troops that they'd avoid getting mulched by mech machine guns.
"Don't even know if he was a kid, to be honest." Marić jumped ahead with a shrug. "I saw him lining up a shot on Miklos and got him first on instinct. Didn't think about it at the time, but when we were sweeping through later I saw him and he looked like a kid."
The blonde trooper ground to a halt, her voice hoarse.
"Well," Reza said. "Fuck."
"Yah, fuck," she agreed.
Another long pause. The Taurian dropship passed out of sight as it landed.
"Your instincts were right," he said with certainty. "For what it's worth."
They sat together in silence for a while, young and old deep in thought.
"We probably should be heading back."
"Yah, sarge."
"The others are probably screwing around."
"Yah, sarge."
"Marić?"
"Yah, sarge?"
"Mind helping an old man up?"
"...Yah, sarge."
===========================
In something of an anti-climax, Republic forces have triumphed in their efforts to conquer the worlds of Hurik and Ward despite the best efforts of Celestial Mandate forces; initial resistance collapsing after only a few hours of combat. Though guarded by multiple MAF regiments supported by militia, the forces arrayed against the ORDI proved no match for the alliance's sheer superiority in all aspects of warfare. Accompanied by elements from the Magistracy of Canopus, the Taurian Concordat, and the Aurigan Coalition, the three Republic armies assigned to Operation Red Breath crashed down upon Hurik and Ward like waves on a beach, 150,000 troops plus air support, armour and mechs bulldozing everything in their path on both worlds.
Launched in late November to maximise preparation opportunities, the operation experienced few issues with supplies thanks to the cautious actions of the Republic a year prior and came as a complete surprise to the Mandate's ruling council as a result of disinformation activities. In addition, though doubtlessly bound to succeed due to the sheer scale of the forces involved, Aurigan and Magistracy sabotage actions proved vital in disrupting the Mandate's ability to fight back; numerous ammo caches destroyed by time-delayed thermite charges and the main power plant of Hurik's capital disabled by members of MIM in the hours before the invasion. Though the Mandate had succeeded in completing some fortifications which, in turn, succeeded in slowing down the Republic's advance across both planets, delays caused by sabotage ensured that most of the planned works remained safely in the minds of their designers.
Though many suspected that the Mandate might respond to Red Breath by dispatching additional forces or else launching a counter-invasion, the rapid conquest of Hurik and Ward seems to have either stunned the authoritarian nation into inaction or else convinced it that a war would not be in its best interests; days turning into weeks turning into months without sign of a response. While the Mandate has thus far refrained from declaring war on the Republic, reports from within the nation indicate that it is busy pulling a large number of forces from its spinward and anti-spinward borders to reinforce its southern borders. In addition, reports from agents embedded throughout the southern reaches have revealed that the Mandate is rapidly ramping up its fortification efforts, simultaneously expanding the use of forced labour in the construction effort to a massive degree. While there have thus far been few signs of an expansion in anti-subversive activities by the Maskirovka, Republic agents have taken the precaution of going to ground wherever possible.
In terms of casualties, Operation Red Breath saw 132 ORDI personnel killed during combat with an additional 407 wounded. The Mandate, meanwhile, suffered a total of 540 killed and 1720 wounded. Surviving Mandate forces, having since surrendered, are currently interned in POW camps pending release back to the Mandate. As for the civilian population, estimates on total casualties are difficult to produce, however, it's estimated that fewer than 100 civilians were killed in the brief conflict with an unknown number injured --the low number of deaths largely due to the civilian population of both planets taking shelter when it became apparent the ORDI was invading. In addition, both planets are currently under martial law managed by Republic troops pending their transfer to the Aurigan Coalition.
