The Shadow Among The Stars: Book One of the Dread Naught Trilogy Read online

  The faint glint of darting drones crossed back and forth through the sky as they delivered crates of ammunition. Brilliant blue and green glows emanated from windows and roofs, as bolts of plasma and laser beams turned whatever they struck to ash and steam. Now and then a red and orange streak rained from orbit in a disconcertingly neat, straight line—a starship slug that shook the earth with a deep, roaring impact. The glittering towers rose far above the havoc, spires of civilization suspended in dusk.

  Nearby, the small fortifications constituting the outer barrier were manned by five squads of Marines, three with a tripod-mounted machine gun, and two with mounted plasma repeaters. A pair of M6-C4 Rubicon Light Battle Tanks stood behind them. Each tank was armed with a pair of sponson-mounted machine guns, and a hefty main cannon that hurled accelerated high-explosive shells. In an era where larger vehicles and walkers were mainstays on the battlefield, many newer tanks had been designed for speed, focusing on mounting a fast-aiming and devastatingly accurate main weapon. This transformed them from close-in bruisers that lead assaults, to long-ranged weapon platforms capable of sniping armored targets and providing fast-moving fire support.

  The Marines panned their large caliber guns back and forth across the horde, stitching tracer rounds and wailing streaks of crackling plasma over the broad, concrete plain. Every two or three seconds one of the Rubicons would fire a shell from its main cannon with a whizzing crack of thunder, rewarded a split second later by a dark burst of shredded enemies. Even so, the enemy numbers were significant enough they would invariably reach the defenses before too long.

  A distance behind the Atet, a panicking mass of Humanity clustered at the docks fighting for places on the latest round of ships and shuttles. Men, women, and children of every description clamored and wailed as the latest craft left the dock at speed, trying their best to get as many people away from the rapidly approaching threat as possible.

  Some of the citizens nearby stopped and wondered at the unique craft that had just landed, as well as the eclectic shapes of its departing crew. Most others were too occupied as they reflected on their lives and continuously diminishing chances of survival. Thousands like them had already been taken from the embattled colony, but for those who remained this fact was of little comfort.

  Bryluen had seen such frenzied relocation efforts before in the wake of natural disasters, T’hròstag raids, and even industrial accidents among the far-flung ’Free Thinker’ communes. This last group, she briefly reflected, was measurably more surly when confronted with the critical flaw in their anti-Government lifestyles, despite the increased need for relief efforts resulting from a suicidal opposition to oversight or culpability. Regardless, in all cases the other similarities were pervasive—the chilling, hissed tone of thousands of tense voices, and an impotent doldrums of fear weighing on every shoulder.

  Bryluen ordered the squad forward. Nicadzim smirked as if the terrible panorama of war reminded him of something quaint, as he moved forward to the nearest Marine position. Runner and Vort advanced past the main barrier, then paused as their eyes took in the overwhelming spectacle. Kirby dragged the barrier closed behind them, then stomped forth to stand next to one of the Rubicons as she leveled her cannons.

  Bryluen leaned slightly, allowing her to smack both Runner and Vort on their backs to bring their attention back. “Runner! First gun nest on the right—just stare down your scope and pick off any big shapes. Vort! First nest on the left and give whatever broad cover you can. Go!”

  The pair were snapped out of their reverie and rushed forward to fulfill their given directives. Vort took off and swooped down next to the Marines manning one of the plasma repeaters. The loader and spotter gave Vort startled looks, but didn’t have the luxury to wonder further as they resumed firing their rifles down range. Runner cleared the distance to the nest in one long leap, the lifts on his boots arresting his fall as he landed and laid his rifle along the top of the nearest crate.

  Bryluen took up a position next to Nicadzim and the Marine squad leader at the central nest, and raised her own weapon. She yelled over the noise to the squad leader next to her, an older man with dark, hard eyes. “Bryluen Branok, CSOE. How are the kids?”

  The squad leader nodded toward Bryluen without leaving his firing posture. “Lieutenant Lapahie, Ma’am. We’re holding out, ammo’s at a good state, but we’re the lucky ones. You can see the boys and girls on the roofs aren’t having as much fun. They’re just staying above water at the moment. Lucky these things don’t seem too interested in climbing up there to get ʻem. Thank God we aren’t having to fight for airspace or this would be much worse.”

  Kirby opened fire, bright mini-shells sailing forward on thin streams of smoke in a funerary rhythm rewarded by tumbling, shattered shapes among the distant horde. With a whoop, she let a bright tangle of rockets whistle from her pods, striking the enemy in a cluster of detonations a second later.

  Runner’s rifle appeared to be wooden, with oxidized metal bands along its thin barrel. The weapon’s antique exterior, however, belied its thoroughly modern nature. With a slap and brief crackle, a focused bolt of energy magnetically adhered to a dense projectile flew outward. An instant later, the shot blew a surgically clean hole in a horned Gugalanna’s forehead. The creature skidded to a stop, causing several lanky Rabisus to trip over it as it gasped out a last breath. Runner inhaled, took new aim, and fired again with a steady exhalation. Through his visor, his eyes seemed almost glossed over as he tuned out the incredible noise around him to descend into a focused pattern of breathing and firing. He slowly began to feel a warmth build in his stomach as he delivered rhythmic, precise head shots.

  Bryluen’s squared weapon had two thin, vertical barrels on the end. As she pulled the trigger, a sharp zip heralded a pair of discs no more than three millimeters apart being projected in parallel at supersonic speeds. As they simultaneously struck a target, each broke releasing an infinitesimal amount of two precise chemical mixtures. As the two chemicals met in the air at the instant of impact they reacted violently, unleashing a three meter high whirlwind of fire that incinerated a cluster of Rabisus in a brief instant.

  She slightly adjusted her aim and fired again while addressing the Lieutenant. “The enemie's numbers say they’re going to get here eventually. When I signal, I want you and your charges to go and set up on the main wall to get some height and keep the guns out of melee. We’ll cover you while you reposition.”

  Vort paced impatiently on top of the boxes next to the Marines. He couldn’t yet reach the enemy with his singing, but he knew the time was coming soon. Nicadzim extended one heavily armored arm. Within his open hand a squared piece of what seemed to be metal instantly appeared, its edges rough as if it had been somehow whittled from a larger block. The exact shape of the object changed subtly whenever an observer blinked, but it retained an open aperture at the end. The aperture spat a tongue of flame as a glowing orb, like a ball of molten steel, rushed forth at a blinding speed. The ball struck a Rabisu and blew out its chest, causing the creature to collapse with a strangulated wheeze. Nicadzim continued firing the fiery orbs into the oncoming enemy without suffering from any obvious recoil.

  The Lieutenant put a cluster of bullets through a Gugalanna’s face. “Yes, ma’am. Hadn’t thought we’d be needing the top of this wall, but shows what I know. You’re an Operative, I know, but who are the rest of your pals? Never seen anything like you folks. Exosuit, that alien over there is … I don’t know, and the big guy here—I don’t have a clue what’s going on with him.”

  Bryluen laughed. “We’re a task force that’s been kept hush hush until now. Nothing secret, per se. You’re the first to see us in action. Hopefully we won’t have to meet again, but if you stumble across these things after today, we just might.”

  “Got it. Well it’s an honor, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you here. If nothing else you can definitely lay down some firepower!”

  The vanguard of the
hostile group had been noticeably whittled down by the added gunfire, and the overall formation began to become narrower as the foe began to concentrate its bulk directly toward their attackers. At around two hundred meters the Rabisus began to fire back, their aim wide of the mark at first. But soon, flares of energy began to kick up around them and occasionally against one of the crates or the side of one of the Rubicons.

  Kirby noisily swapped weapons, producing two flak cannons with triad barrels. After taking a moment to adjust the weapons’ choke, she began spraying the oncoming group with shaped metal shards that sawed through flesh in a wide, conical spread. Runner’s rate of fire increased as the enemy ranged closer. Nicadzim began to aim less, the bulk of the nearing enemy making a missed shot difficult. Bryluen continued to fire her weapon at the densest visible portions of the enemy mass. But most importantly, Vort was finally in range.

  The alien hunkered down on his ten feet for a moment before producing a bizarre sound—something between the whine produced by holding a magnet near an antique radio and the haunting melodiousness of whale song—as a valve on the end of his segmented trunk armor popped open. A cluster of lightning bolts burst forth from the end of his trunk with a deafening clap of compressed air. The bolts struck the nearest foes and instantly danced through them to the next, and the next, and the next a dozen ranks deep. The rapid temperature change induced by the bolts caused parts of the struck creatures to burst and burn, hurling the afflicted enemies through the air in a simultaneous display lit in blinding white. Half a platoon’s worth of enemies were struck dead in a single, overwhelmingly violent moment.

  The group’s firing seemed to hesitate for a split second at the unexpected onrush of destruction, after which Runner cheered enthusiastically and Nicadzim grunted. Kirby unleashed another rack of rockets at she howled in approval.

  Bryluen smiled inside her helmet. “Pace yourself, but … damn if that doesn’t do the job.”

  Nicadzim shook his hand, the metal block replaced by a long tapering conical object that appeared to be shaped from mother of pearl. He rested the larger end in his left hand and lobbed a series of bouncing, spiked spheroids from the end of the object. The spheres bounced several times to reach the enemy, before splitting open and unleashing clusters of glowing darts. The darts lodged themselves in the front rank of the foe, emitting oily smoke as they burned through them. A number of creatures fell screeching as he continued to pepper them with more of the spheres.

  Bryluen motioned over her shoulder. “Alright, Lieutenant, time to get up the wall. Vort, hop up there with them, will you?”

  Lieutenant Lapahie signaled his squad to redeploy, as Vort fluttered to the top of the barrier and loosed another storm of lightning. The Marines rapidly unloaded and disassembled their weapons, before lugging them in pieces up ladders mounted to the front of the barrier. There they took cover behind some smaller crates stacked on top of the wall, and set their guns back into position in a similar layout as before. The tanks stayed in place, laying down punishing covering fire to distract the enemy from the temporarily vulnerable soldiers. Soon the heavy weapons spoke again, once more lighting up the night with an intense blanket of munitions.

  Bryluen magnified her voice to be heard by both Dread Naught and the Marines. “Melee contact in twelve. We can’t let any of these bastards pass this wall! So grenades out, boys and girls—and get ready to smash some heads!”

  Bryluen, Runner, and the Marines not firing the heavy weapons pulled grenades from their belts and lobbed them forward in long arcs, red grenade indicators tracing their path on the team’s visor HUDs. A series of harsh detonations followed seconds later among the enemy front line, pulverizing dozens of individuals in a frantic burst of fire and thick smoke. The seconds afforded by the cluster of explosions allowed Dread Naught to prepare for melee. By forcing the enemy to engage in front of the wall, Bryluen hoped to keep them from both overwhelming the mounted weapons and from simply flowing past the wall itself.

  The Operative detached the nanowhip cylinder from her belt and clenched her fingers around it, using one thumb to adjust the whip’s length with a slider on the side of the cylinder. After slinging the disc gun on her back, she drew her pistol in her free hand and placed the barrel against her helmet for a moment as if kissing it. Runner clipped his rifle back in place before drawing his paired tri-pistols, and began to flex his legs in anticipation. Nicadzim now held a glowing blue rod shaped like an antique police baton, and puffed a harsh breath through his mustache.

  A long, tempered blade slid out the back of each of Kirby’s gauntlets as she struck a sideways fighting posture. Behind the thick cockpit glass she smirked. The sounds of hundreds of running feet and the gunfire overhead had been constant and unyielding. As the first enemy reached the members of Dread Naught, the sound-scape shifted to include a chaotic sputter of footwork, a whole new series of cries, and a substantial array of wet, squelching impacts.

  Bryluen began to whip the wire through groups of Rabisus with constant, fluid motions like a carnival performer, causing enemy limbs and torsos to be strewn around her. In the brief gap between swings she would fire her pistol, pulping chest cavities and plant-like heads at an even tempo.

  Runner’s pistols fired a wide spread of heavy shot with each trigger pull. He dodged and weaved with economical motions, occasionally leaping or somersaulting over an enemy. He unleashed punishing blasts as he flew to and fro in an airy, easy fashion made possible by the lifts on his armor boots.

  Nicadzim’s baton flared with exotic energy as it struck home, and each enemy recoiled from multiple strikes for every one Nicadzim appeared to make. He accomplished motions and dealt attacks faster than he should have been able to in his heavy armor, his spatial-warping eccentricities applying to his melee attacks in a whirling storm of violence. A nearby Rabisu tried to hurl a fireball in his direction, only to die as the same fireball somehow struck the Rabisu at the base of its neck.

  Bryluen glanced upwards as a disemboweled Rabisu passed overhead. Kirby was raging like an angered bear, the immense strength of her artificial musculature allowing her to swing her blades through groups of enemies with wild abandon. With an open palm she slapped a charging Gugalanna on the top of the head so hard it was forced onto its stomach. With a roar, she grabbed its horns, spun on her heels, and hurled the heavy creature into a crowd of its compatriots. The Rabisus around her shied away to make for less imposing targets as she stepped forward, her blades already coated in a layer of filmy black matter.

  The Marines poured fire at the outer edges of the enemy horde as it tried to overwhelm Dread Naught with sheer numbers. The two Rubicons rolled around slowly, grinding enemies beneath their treads as they fired all about, gathering superficial scorch marks and long tears from Gugalanna horns along their tread guards. Occasionally a crew member would peer from the top hatch to shoot a few Rabisus off the top of their respective vehicle.

  A torrent of red and orange flame rained down from Vort as he flew overhead, all but erasing an entire flank of the enemy advance in a roaring wave of incineration. He darted and jinked like a fighter as Rabisus not otherwise involved in the brawl fired at him. A persistent cloud of black ichor materialized around the melee fighters as the vicious fighting continued in a brutal maelstrom.

  Kirby had been struck by at least a dozen futile fireballs, and she had taken minor armor damage from horn strikes, but was little worse for the wear. Runner experienced a few close calls but his agility had allowed him to leap and spin out of the way of danger over and over again in a series of acrobatic, gravity-defying maneuvers. Nicadzim’s heavy armor allowed him less caution than the others, his excess plating taking the brunt of the many claw strikes that had come his way as he swung through the foe in broad motions. The ichor splashing about him tended to float slowly or accelerate in the wrong direction. Several Rabisu fireballs that passed near him simply fell to the ground, as if they had been spiked by a volleyball player. Bryluen sidestepped a Gug
alanna, taking off its horns with an upward stroke of her nanowhip. The creature, paying no heed to the loss of its bony extremities, slowed to aim toward her once more but buckled as Runner landed on its back and emptied both his pistols directly into its broad skull.

  The otherwise numerous enemy had been bogged down in the melee as the heavy weaponry on hand—as well as Vort’s artillery-like destructive capacity—had reduced the enemy’s advantage to nothing. Finishing off an injured Gugalanna with a mercy shot through the eye, Bryluen’s honed battle sense detected the most important moment in almost any close combat situation.

  The prime currency of any melee was momentum. When two lines clashed, if one side could be pushed out of place or bent, they would be torn apart. Coherency ensured the enemy could not maintain its momentum, and maintaining coherency prevented a weakness from presenting itself.

  When a numerically superior enemy relied on its weight to provide it the needed momentum to break apart a smaller formation, the smaller formation must always fight in such a way the enemy’s weight cannot properly be brought to bear—thus equalizing the momentum of each side. This forces the battle into a grind where the foe’s numbers would either not matter, or would actively work against them. Whenever such a grind occurred it was more of a tug of war as each side pushed at the other, and the moment one side lost its footing was the precise moment for its opposition to make one final effort to finish the battle.

  Identifying such a moment was less a matter of visuals and more of a broad sensation. A subtle shift in the sounds of combat, a change in the tone of voices, and the slightest, rolling hesitation in enemy actions preceded the instant a rout or retreat reached the front line.