The Guardians of Sol Read online

  "This is the Gate of Dawn," a rather cocky voice announced. "Somebody need some rescuing?"

  I zoned out the reply as our shuttle group veered towards the massive Citadel-class and its tenders. The Gate launched a veritable cloud of missiles that completely overwhelmed one of the enemy vessels and crippled another. The third one managed to fire its particle cannon at the Gate, but amazingly the beam bent and twisted around and away from the Gate of Dawn and into the vast emptiness of space. In response, three of its support vessels slipped forward and slagged the offending vessel with a tremendous barrage of plasma.

  The shuttle shook from a hit to our aft. I refocused on our immediate problem to see at least a squadron's worth of enemy fighters trying to shove themselves down our tailpipes. In front of us, two Aegis destroyers left the rest of the group to get to my group faster. One of them, the Tribute to Hunger launched a barrage of missiles as well as its own two squadrons of fighters. The other destroyer, the Sorrow of Gehenna opened its docking bay and presented the passage to the approaching shuttles. The Tribute's defense quickly discouraged our remaining pursuers. Our shuttle’s pilot dropped us to the Sorrow's deck surprisingly gently, given her earlier brusque takeoff.

  Rommy disconnected me from the external shuttle feeds. I finally let myself relax. I was even getting myself fairly at peace with the weeks of travel that we could expect to get back to Earth at sublight speeds when that nauseating sense of unreality overcame me and painted everything in greyish hues for a split second that lasted an eternity. I looked at the other men in the cabin. They were just as confused as I was until the pilot happily announced over her intercom that we were back in orbit of Earth. Which was nice, but it didn't address how we made a slipspace jump without a gate. I hate mysteries, even when they do benefit me.

  36

  February 9, 2290. Close Saturn Orbit.

  The unnerving feeling that came with a slipjump ended as quickly as it started, and the Gaea's Strength launched its combat shuttles. The ship itself fired a devastating salvo on the Centurion flotilla in formation around Saturn station which was joined by fire from the rest of the Guardian taskforce. Several smaller enemy vessels were destroyed outright, and one of the larger ones took some nasty hits on its side.

  The Gaea's sister ship, the Staff of Hermes and their escorts launched a veritable cloud of fighters to protect the shuttle force. The first ragged wave of aquiline enemy fighters was torn apart by the three-pod Cerberus and the more streamlined Phoenix craft. Carefully targeted long range fire from the two Bastion ships quickly removed the threat of the station's defensive weaponry.

  Fortunately, the Centurions and traitor Guardians had not had the time, or perhaps the inclination, to substantially change the station's operating systems. As the combat shuttles neared the hangar bays, Guardian AIs overrode the doors and vented the atmosphere. Defensive troops expecting a violent entrance still weren't properly braced against the sudden pull of the escaping atmosphere. A duo of shuttles flew into the hangar closest to the station's operations center. As one of them landed, the other hung in the air and destroyed what little opposition lay there with its mounted turrets. Once settled, each shuttle disgorged three squads of Castigars.

  The Shadowstealers, flanked by two squads of Advanced Recon Castigars in simplified versions of their own kit headed towards Operations. The other three squads were all veteran mainliners with years of experience. They headed to the secondary command center. From each hangar bay, Castigars and Vindicators were moving from their shuttles to strategic points throughout Saturn station. The strike was happening so fast, and so unexpectedly, that resistance was so far minimal. It was not that they were not encountering enemy soldiers so much as there was not yet any organized resistance. That would change soon. Just not soon enough to save the bastards.

  Christoph's men, and their ARC squads, made good time, five levels in ten minutes, avoiding the lifts and other obvious access routes. There were only three more decks until they reached the top when the Shadowstealers ran into a team of Ring Jumpers trying to barricade an intersection. The ARCs had spread out to parallel hallways just in case any of the groups got bogged down on the way to the target.

  Bright flares of light burned into the hallway behind Christoph and his men as the Ring Jumpers pointed their arms at their blurred forms. Shadowstealer railguns swung into position and quietly returned fire. The rail rounds were shaped in such a way that they made no more noise than a careless footstep. The flurry of quiet thumps left the four enemy soldiers dead, and the Shadowstealers swept past.

  Everything was going better than expected. It was so easy. The thought almost stopped Christoph in his tracks. The operation was going a bit too smoothly. The enemy would have known that the Guardians wouldn't stand long for them occupying such a powerful and prominent outpost. Even if they hadn't reasoned that out themselves the traitors should have informed them. So why such minimal resistance?

  An elevator opened up at the end of the corridor and disgorged an entire platoon of heavily armored men. They filled the hall with fire and the Shadowstealers took up positions at intersecting avenues. A few of them had taken hits, and their active camouflage was flickering. The Specials returned fire, but the platoon had slowed their advance. Through the screening efforts of the AIs, Christoph could see that the ARC squads were still progressing apace even through opposition. He couldn't really maintain the Specials mystique if they didn't do the same.

  "Smoke 'em out," he ordered. Half a dozen grenades were quickly lobbed toward their enemies. The grenades filled the air with the special smoke that choked off their enemies’ senses. The Specials captain turned off his active camouflage for the time being to help preserve its integrity. They rushed in.

  Outlined by the echo systems, the enemy soldiers looked close to panic. Christoph made it to the enemy line first, and his big blade ripped into a man's chest. Grabbing the man's neck with his free hand, he tore the big blade through the soldier and decapitated the next closest. The captain shot a third man and buried his blade in a fourth. By then the entire platoon lay dead. The AIs had a strong enough hold on the system, Christoph figured. He had his entire squad file into the empty elevator.

  *****

  Christoph had carried a deep and burning anger deep in his gut since his father's assassination... his father's murder. Michael had done more for the cause of humanity than anyone in the last century. And they had murdered him. His anger had made his combat against the Centurions, and particularly the treacherous Saturn garrison, far more brutal. He had become calculatedly reckless. Although he was determined not to become one of those men that endangered the men he fought alongside with. Yet his Swordmaster's trance tinged his vision with red.

  Enemy soldiers were stationed outside the elevator exit on the operations level, but when the doors opened all they could see was smoke. Trained not to fire without a target, they did not fire. The Shadowstealers, on the other hand, had plenty of targets. Smoke poured from their armor and pushed the screen out into the hall. The first moving enemy that came into Christoph's reach lost half his head to the big blade. The next had his spine shattered by two quick blows to the back. The rest fell quickly, easily.

  The Shadowstealers made good time to the operations center while the ARC squads got bogged down on their own routes. The other insertion teams began reporting success in their sectors. The Shadowstealers lined either side of Ops main entrance and forced it open. Smoke grenades went in. Surprisingly accurate shots from inside Ops threw them back out.

  "You would be the Specials squad running the operation, no?" A cultured Centurion voice slithered out. "Why don't you come in and talk for a moment?"

  Carefully and, mostly, calmly, Christoph moved to stand in the doorway. Ops was infested with Centurions. The speaker was a man that could have been the twin of the one who had killed his father. Even their armor was strikingly familiar. To either side of the door were multiple Serult held on chains by men in hulking armor
that was large and imposing by any standards. Those must be Beastmasters, if he remembered the Vadasz briefings correctly. There were plenty of other men standing around menacingly as well.

  "I hope that you're going to negotiate your release from this station," Christoph hostilely.

  "Not at all," The enemy officer replied with an annoyingly friendly smile. "I just want to enjoy the moment. Have you checked on your other teams in the last few moments?"

  Christoph did run a quick check. The ARCs were flagged as red. Dead. The engineering team red: dead. Coms team red: dead. Insertion shuttles... green. There was a still a way off the station. He switched to the dedicated squad comline.

  "All the other teams are dead. Kael, on my signal get everyone back to the shuttles and head home. No, don't argue. Just get-"

  "You are the Shadowmaker captain, are you not? I suppose I should be angry with you, but then, I never did much care for my cousin," The greenskinned Centurion interrupted. "So thank you for killing him. I'll try to make your death quick as a reward. At least my cousin succeeded in his mission, eh? That certainly would have reflected poorly on the family."

  "Hm, yeah," Christoph muttered to the Ekai, not bothering to correct his squad’s name. He turned his attention back to his lieutenant as his vision tinged red again. "I'll try to be on the shuttle with you guys, but I feel the sudden need to kill that man. On my signal, take the squad to the shuttles, I'll hold the rear."

  Kael clicked his assent, however reluctant. The Ekai was still droning on. Christoph centered himself again and sent the signal. The Shadowstealers began venting their smoke again, a fair amount of it pushed into the control room. As the main force fell back, a few of them bounced the last of their smoke grenades down low to add to the confusion. The captain let fire through the gap and killed several men, including one of the Beastmasters. One of the Farkas beasts he had been controlling immediately turned on the surrounding Centurions. The other beast rushed for the gap along with the remaining two from the other Beastmaster

  They ignored Christoph as he jumped past them to get at the Ekai, who was busy putting his aquiline helmet on. The Ekai was just as fast as the one before, and managed to keep well ahead of the Castigar's guns and blades. Other Centurions were not as lucky and fell when they found themselves too close. The smoke was confusing their sensors; the active camo was confusing their eyes. The other Guardian teams had been professional, well trained, but they did not have the same advantages as Chrisoph's Specials squad. Christoph lobbed his last few grenades around. Smoke began the fill the room in earnest.

  The remaining Beastmaster took a wild sweep with a nasty looking greatsword that would have cracked the back of Christoph's head, but was instead blocked by a big blade. The raging Serult bounded past and into the Beastmaster. A moment later a small explosion rocked both beings.

  Christoph looked around to see one of his men watching his back. "You should be gone, Prophet."

  "I can't very well be getting off your shitlist if you're dead now can I? The other blokes don't need me, Boss. You do. We'll get us out of here yet if I have anything to say about it."

  Christoph looked around for his target and found the Ekai standing on the upper walkway with sword drawn. The other man's head was cocked to the side, blade angled down across his chest, with a strange, stylized stance.

  The Swordmaster vaulted consoles and displays with very little noise. Closing on his prey, he angled his strike to take the other man's head off. The Ekai moved, slightly, and brought his sword around to deflect the big blade, slightly. Christoph struck with his off hand knuckle blade, but again met only with air. The Ekai's boot sent the much larger Castigar stumbling back.

  The Ekai's sword dug a deep tear into Christoph's chest armor. Every attack Christoph made made no connection. Most of his opponent's did. Even though they hit, the strikes did seem somewhat tentative and probing.

  The Ekai must be an amazing species. Christoph mused. The smoke obfuscated visibility in all but the very highest electromagnetic frequencies. The armor made practically no noise except that from the echo system. This particular Ekai seemed to be listening to the smallest clues to guide his reactions in a way that no human would have been able to.

  Prophet made his way over to help box the last Centurion in. Their teamwork was working, backing the smaller man into a corner. They came close, but just before they could close the jaws of their trap a returning Serult followed its nose to the men. Without much warning, for the Castigars were somewhat distracted, the beast leapt upon Prophet, ripping and tearing. His cries were terrible.

  Christoph disengaged from the Ekai swordsman and let loose a volley from his railgun. The beast dropped; however, the damage was done. His demolitions expert was in critical condition beyond Christoph's or his armor's ability to stabilize him. Christoph choked on his emotion. He couldn't focus. The Ekai cleared his throat behind the Castigar.

  Christoph turned, too slowly. The Ekai pierced his knee and opposing shoulder in quick succession. A burning hammer smote his chest where the Ekai stabbed him a third time. As the Specials captain collapsed, and the darkness moved in he heard the other man speak.

  "What is the saying here? Oh yes. Hubris goes before the fall."

  *****

  Centurion ships jumped into positions surrounding Saturn Station. The Gaea's commander looked frantically for options on the holographic display of the battlefield. The Guardian ships were well outnumbered now. Several Aegis destroyers had been obliterated already.

  "How are the insertion teams doing? We need support from Saturn station's defenses!" The commander cried.

  "No word yet, sir. They are all beyond mission time parameters now. Something must have gone wrong."

  "Damn. Can we make it to the Gate?"

  "No, sir! More enemy ships just jumped in the way!"

  "Sir! I've got several shuttles leaving the station. They claim to have the Specials squad on board."

  The commander took a deep breath. "Get them docked. Have our remaining fighters screen their flight path."

  "No good sir! They have several enemy wings on approach. Our fighters won't make it in time!"

  They watched as the enemy fighters destroyed each shuttle. Their hope dimming that much more with each loss.

  "Signal the fleet," The commander ordered dejectedly. "Plot a course for the inner system. Give us a full burn to the nearest friendly station. Let's get out of here."

  It would be a journey of several very long weeks without the jump gate. Their damaged moral might not stand it very well. The Centurion fleet wasn’t pursuing with much gusto, and the commander retreated to his office to prepare for the coming conversation with his superiors.

  37

  February 9, 2290. Mars orbital shipyards.

  Telamon stared at the holographic display in the center of the command deck on the Liberation. Little blips representing ships waved about like a legion of insects. His son-in-law and a few other Swordmasters were directing the flow.

  A warning had come down through the Venator pipeline a few days ago that the Centurions were planning an attack on the Ares shipyards. Telamon's intelligence sources had traced the contact through the network back to somewhere in the Saturn orbit. They couldn't track down anything else. It did not seem unlikely that the Guardian forces in that area were completely unanimous in the decision to defect.

  The warning was taken with a pinch of salt, of course, but any warning was better than none. Vadasz had said the Centurions had over four hundred ships. The warning said to expect about a third of that.

  They had hidden several wings of phoenix—class fighters on Phobos and Deimos, as well as many of the resource satellites now in orbit. The pilots ended up waiting there for the better part of two days. When the enemy fleet jumped in they still hadn't had time to readjust to real space before the fighters took out their jump drives with burrowing missiles. More than one ship suffered from a critical overload and was destroyed on the spot. Still,
one hundred and forty odd ships were more than enough to overwhelm the fifty ships protecting the Mars facilities.

  The fighters had withdrawn, and the enemy fleet moved on to its objectives. Even at that point it wasn't clear whether the objective was to destroy or to capture the shipyards. The Mars forces put up the fight they were expected to. Couriers had stood by and left with messages the moment the enemy fleet appeared. Within a few moments, most of Earth's fleet, and a fair portion of Jupiter's had appeared as flanking forces to the Centurions.

  Once the fleets arrived, the Swordmasters went to work. The Centurions had good generals, good tacticians. They even had quite a few units that were more than physical for most Guardians. The enemy, however, had no way to really deal with the end products of the Swordmaster program.

  The fighters on both sides were fairly matched, and knew their business. The Swordmasters ignored them for the most part and focused on the larger ships. They began the process of picking off straggling cruisers, and separating battle groups. They managed, for the most part, to get friendly ships to realign their axes out of the path of particle blasts.

  A courier popped into existence off the Liberation's bow. A burst of high volume data packets passed between the two ships and the courier jumped again. Telamon pulled up the information on his data pad.

  He watched as a second, much smaller enemy task force jumped into Earth orbit. The few remaining Guardian ships fell back to defensive positions around the Forge and Von Braun city. Half of the enemy force continued on toward Earth, and the other half veered toward the Forge. The Forge was at an angle in its orbit that gave it a very clear view of the incoming ships.