Alien Salute Read online

  Alien Salute

  The Sand Wars

  Book IV

  Charles Ingrid

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Interlude

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Intercepted

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Interloper

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Prologue

  Where in the hell was their transport? What had happened to recall? Jack fought the maddening impulse to scratch inside his armor, as sweat dripped down, and the contacts attached to his bare torso itched impossibly. To scratch now, the way he was hooked up, he’d blow himself away.

  Damn. Where was that signal? They couldn’t have been forgotten, could they? If the pullout had happened, they would have been picked up… wouldn’t they?

  As sweat trickled down his forehead, he looked around.

  Sand. They had been dropped in a vast sea-gulf of sand. Everywhere beige and brown and pink dunes rose and fell with a life of their own. This was what the Thraks did to a living world. And the Knights, in their suits of battle armor, trained and honed to fight a “Pure” war destroying only the enemy, not the environment, were all that stood between Milos and his own home world lined up next in a crescent of destruction that led all the way back to the heart of the Thrakian League.

  So far, they’d been lucky here on Milos. Only one of the continents had gone under… still, it was one too many as far as the lieutenant was concerned. The Dominion Forces were losing the Sand Wars. And he was losing his own private struggle with his faith in his superior officers. They’d been dropped into nowhere five days ago and had been given the most succinct of orders, gotten a pithy confirmation that morning and nothing since. Routine, he’d been told. Strictly a routine mop-up. You don’t treat Knights that way—not the elite of the infantrymen, the fastest, smartest and most honorable fighters ever trained to wage war.

  Jack moved inside the battle suit. The Flexalinks meshed imperceptibly and the holograph that played over him sent the message to the suit and, in turn, the right arm flexed. Only that flex, transmitted and stepped up, could have turned over an armored car. He sucked a dry lip in dismay over the reflex, then turned his face inside the helmet to read the display.

  The display bathed his face plate in a rosy color and his eyesight flickered briefly to the rearview camera display, just to see which of the troops were ranged at his back. The compass wasn’t lying to him. “Five clicks. Sarge, have they got us walking in circles?” His suit crest winked in the sun as he looked to his next in command.

  “No, sir.” Sarge made a husky noise at the back of his throat. Sarge wore the Ivanhoe crest—a noncommittal comment on what he thought of his lineage and his home world, but it made no difference to Storm. The men who joined the Knights came from every walk of life and the only criterion was whether a soldier was good enough to use a suit. If he was, and if he survived basic training, his past became a sealed record, if that was the way the man wanted it.

  The sand made Jack thirsty. He waved his arm. “All right, everybody spread out. Advance in a line. If the Thraks are here, that’ll flush ‘em. Keep alert. Watch your rear displays and your flanks.”

  The com line crackled as Bilosky’s voice came over in sheer panic. “Red field! Lieutenant, I’m showing a fracking red field!”

  Storm swiveled his head toward the sound, cursed at the obstruction of the face plate, and re-turned a fraction more slowly so that his cameras could follow the motion. “Check your gauges again, Bilosky. It’s a malfunction. And calm down.” The last in a deadly quiet.

  Bilosky’s panic stammered to a halt. “Yes, sir.” Then, “Goddammit, Storm—those Milots have pilfered my suit! Every one of my gauges is screwed. I’m showing a red field because I’m running on empty!”

  Storm bit his tongue. He chinned the emergency lever at the bottom of the face plate, shutting down the holograph field. Then he pulled his arm out of the sleeve quickly and thumbed the com line switches on his chest patch so that he could talk to Bilosky privately. Without power or any action to translate, his suit stumbled to a halt. The Flexalinks shone opalescent in the sun.

  “How far can you get?”

  Not listening, Bilosky swore again. “Goddamn Milots. Here I am fighting their fracking war for them, and they’re pirating my supplies—I ought to—”

  “Bilosky!”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got… oh, three clicks to go, maybe. Then I’m just another pile of junk standing on the sand.” He turned to look at his superior officer, the black hawk crest rampant.

  Storm considered the dilemma. He had his orders, and knew what his orders told him. Clean out Sector Five, and then stand by to get picked up. The last of Sector Five ranged in front of him. They could ration out the most important refills for Bilosky once they got where they were going. “We’ll be picked up by then.”

  “Or the Thraks will have us picked out.”

  Storm didn’t answer for a moment. He was asking a man with little or no power reserves showing on his gauges to go on into battle, in a suit, in full battle mode. Red didn’t come up on the gauges until the suit was down to the last ten percent of its resources. That ten percent would carry him less than an hour in full attack mode. Not that it made any difference to a Knight. Jack sighed. “We’re on a wild goose chase, Bilosky. You’ll make it.”

  “Right, sir.” A grim noise. “Better than having my suit crack open like an egg and havin’ a berserker pop out. Right, Lieutenant?”

  That sent a cold chill down Storm’s back. He didn’t like his troopers repeating ghoulish rumors. “Bilosky, I don’t want rumors like that bandied around. You hear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Then, reluctantly, “It ain’t no rumor, lieutenant. I saw it happen once.”

  “Forget it!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Going back on open air. And watch your mouth.” He watched as the other lumbered back into position. Then, abruptly, Jack dialed in his command line and watched as the miniscule screen lit up, his only link with the warship orbiting far overhead. The watch at the console, alerted by the static of their long-range comm lines, swung around. The navy blue uniform strained over his bullish, compact figure. He looked into the lens, his nostrils flaring. The squared chin was cleft and its line deepened in anger. A laser burn along one side of his hairline gave him a lopsided widow’s peak.

  “Commander Winton here. You’re violating radio silence, soldier. What’s the meaning of this? Identify yourself.”

  “I’m Battalion First Lieutenant,” he said. “Where’s our pullout? We were dropped in here five days ago.”

  “You’re under orders, lieutenant. Get in there and fight. Any further communication and I’ll have you up for court martial.”

  “Court martial? Is that the best you can do? We’re dying down here, commander. And we’re dying all alone.”

  The line and screen went dead with a hiss. Suddenly aware of his own vulnerability, Storm pushed his right arm back into his sleeve and chinned
the field switch back on. His suit made an awkward swagger, then settled into a distance eating stride. Fighting wars would be a hell of a lot easier if you could be sure who the enemy was.

  Bilosky and Sarge and who knows who else were talking about berserkers now. The unease it filled him with he could do without. He squinted through the tinted face plate at the alien sun. Strange worlds, strange people, and even stranger enemies. Right now he’d rather wade through a nest of Thraks then try to find his way through the rumors surrounding the Milots and their berserkers.

  There was no denying the rumors though. The Milots, who had summoned Dominion forces to fight for them against the Thraks—those same low-tech Milots who ran the repair centers and provided the war backup—were as despicable and treacherous as the Thraks whom Storm had enlisted to wipe out. And there were too many stories about altered suits… suits that swallowed a man up and spawned instead some kind of lizard-beastman who was a fighting automaton, a berserker. Rumor had it the Milots were putting eggs into the suits, and the heat and sweat of the suit wearer hatched those eggs and then the parasitic creature devoured its host and burst forth—

  He told himself that the Milots had a strange sense of humor. What Bilosky thought he’d seen, whatever every trooper who repeated the gossip thought they were talking about, was probably a prank played at a local tavern. Knights always took a certain amount of ribbing from the locals, until they were seen in action, waging the “Pure” war.

  Ahead of him, the dunes wavered, sending up a spray of sand. His intercom burst into sound.

  “Thraks at two o’clock, lieutenant!”

  Storm set his mouth in a grim smile. Now here was an enemy he could deal with. He eyed his gauges to make sure all his systems were ready, and swung about.

  Thraks were insects, in the same way jackals were primates or ordinary sow bugs were crustaceans. They were equally at home upright or on all fours, due to the sloping of their backs. Jack took his stand and watched them boil up out of the sand from underground nests and launch themselves in a four-footed wave until they got close enough to stand up and take fire. Thraks were vicious and dedicated to a single purpose… at least, fighting Thraks were. Diplomatic Thraks, so he had heard, were as vicious in a far more insidious way.

  He cocked his finger, setting off a burst of fire from his glove weapons that slowed the wave. The line of Thraks wavered and swung away, even as they stood up and slung their rifles around from their backs.

  On Milot, they had the slight advantage, having gotten there first and having begun their despicable planet transforming. Even a slight advantage to the Thraks was disastrous to the Dominion. Milot was already as good as lost. Battalions had been wiped out, forced into the deserts, to make as graceful a retreat as possible. Inflict as many casualties as they could, then pull out. Jack’s job, as he understood it, was to make the toll of taking Milos so heavy, so dear, that the Thraks would stop here.

  Storm’s grim smile never wavered, even as he strode forward, spewing death as he went, watching the gauge detailing how much power he had left. Bodies crunched under his armored boots.

  They were mopping up. They were to distract the Thraks and the enemy cannon long enough to let most of the troop ships—almost all of them cold-ships—pull out, and then they would be picked up. That was the promise…

  He strides through the line, knowing the wings of his men will follow, and seeing that the front is not a front, but an unending wave of Thraks. What was reported as a minor outpost is a major staging area, and he’s trapped in it, wading through broken bodies and seared flesh. He sweeps both gloves into action, firing as he walks, using the power boost to vault walls of fallen bodies and equipment.

  Somewhere along the way, Bilosky lets out a cry and grinds to a halt, out of power. He screams as his suit is slit open with a diamond cutter and the Thraks pull him out. Jack ignores the screams and plows onward. He has no choice now. The pullout site is ahead of him. He has to go through the Thraks if he wants to be rescued. Ahead of him is the dream of cold sleep and the journey home. The dream…

  He lives long enough to fall into a pit, a pit ringed by Thraks, surrounded by what is left of his troop, and by stragglers from other battalions. They stand back to back for days, firing only when absolutely necessary, watching the unending waves of Thraks above them. And he sees a suit burst open, days after its wearer expired with a horrendous scream and the armor halted like a useless statue in the pit. He sees the seams pop and an incredible beast plow out, and charge the rim of the pit, taking fully a hundred armed Thraks with it, even as it bellows, striking fear in those beyond its reach. He knows he is dreaming that he has seen a berserker, and tries to ignore the empty shell-like suit with the crest of Ivanhoe left behind in shards and settling into the sand.

  Even as he stands and fires, he thinks of what it is he wants to dream. He wants to dream getting out of there alive, with his men. That is what he wants most. Then he wants to be able to scratch. And he thinks he hears something inside the suit with him, something whispering at his shoulder, and he knows he’s losing it. Aunt Min back home always said that when the Devil wanted you, he began by whispering to you over your shoulder. Storm is scared to turn around. All he wants to do is find his dream of going home. And when the recall comes, he doesn’t know if he’s hearing what he’s hearing or not… or if he can even be found behind the wall of Thraks.

  And then he realizes he is cold sleep dreaming, on an endless loop, dreaming without beginning or end until someone finds and awakens him.

  But that was then. This is now…

  Chapter 1

  The aged freighter hardly qualified as a transport ship, let alone a cold ship, but none of the nearly five hundred people crowded into it complained. They stood and shivered and talked quietly to each other in knotted groups, looking pale and shaken as they waited for processing.

  Only one man had an expression of triumph seized out of the jaws of the defeat that had forced them into exodus. Tall, made massive by his opalescent battle armor, he looked the crowd over now, and his eyes flashed with eagerness even as he assessed the results of the evacuation.

  “What if the emperor offers you the command?”

  He made a noise of anger. “Kavin’s hardly cold in the ground.”

  The woman with the questioning, gentle brown eyes remained composed under the wash of his anger, tilting her head slightly to one side as though to veer away from it. “But we have to consider it, don’t we?” She kept her hand on the Flexalink sleeve he supported her with. Beneath her fingers, she felt the smoke and grime of battle, and her delicate nose still scented blood faintly though most of it had been washed away. They’d both witnessed the violent death of his commanding officer and friend. They stood intimately close in the immense hold of the transport ship that vibrated loudly under their feet. “And I need to talk to you… I need time to tell you what happened.” The man’s helmet was off, hanging from an equipment hook at his waist. Sweat darkened his sandy blond hair and fatigue washed out his blue eyes. Even with his strong cheekbones, he was plain-faced, ordinary, but there was something commanding in his features. Tiny lines were etched at the corners of his eyes and into his forehead, for all he appeared at the prime of his twenties. His avid gaze deflected from his field command to her, and softened as he took her in. The reflection of her image in his eyes was as intimate as an embrace. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I just thank god you came back.”

  A shiver swept over her, setting off the intricate blue patterning of the tattoos that covered her—that made her alien from her lover. These tattoos were only a small portion of what she had suffered, when the religious wars had swept across Bythia and forced the Dominion settlers to flee. But she knew Jack was most concerned about facing Emperor Pepys. “You’ve got two months of chill time to think about it,” Amber returned. “You’d better have an answer for the emperor by the time we get home.”

  “If he offers it to me, I’ll think about
it.”

  “Not good enough,” she said, and streetwise savvy edged her tones. They were among the last of the evacuees to be processed. “You have to accept, if Pepys asks you. You’re the only one left who knows how to fight a ‘Pure’ war. Anyone can wear a suit—”

  He looked down at her and his mouth twitched. “—well, not anyone, but no one understands the warfare the way you do.”

  “I know,” he said then, heavily.

  The freighter seemed to groan around them as it picked up acceleration speed. It would take days to hit warp speed, weeks in transit, and then days of deceleration. Those days would pass as if in a dream to the vast bulk of its passengers.

  Amber pressed her fingers into his armor. “And then we can talk.”

  Storm shifted his weight uneasily. He did not like the prospect of cold sleep, never had, never would. A nurse came by, still in sterile greens, and Jack stepped out to block his passage.

  “I don’t want any of these people on a debriefing loop.”

  The nurse came to a startled halt. His face was narrow and his chin pointed, giving him a feral look. “We take our orders from Emperor Pepys—”

  “Not now you don’t. I don’t want any of those evacuees stressed out. They won’t forget what happened.” He felt Amber shudder at his side. As if any of them could forget the bloody civil uprising out of which they were being emergency lifted, compounded by the ever-present, ever-dangerous Thraks and the rumors of war.

  The nurse sniffed. “Of course, commander.” He hurried past then, skirting around the battle-armored man with caution.

  Jack smiled. Too tired to do so, he couldn’t hold it, and the expression faded rapidly from his face.

  Amber relaxed a little. “Thanks, Jack,” she said softly.

  “Not just for you. I don’t trust the debriefing loops.” He looked out over the hold as another small group of evacuees pressed forward into the medical bay. Far ahead of them stood St. Colin of the Blue Wheel, watched over by his lumbering bodyguard and aide, Jonathan. The Walker prelate leaned on a cane, injured but hearty nonetheless. Fine gray and chestnut hairs strayed across a balding head, but his chin was square and his massive hands gestured as he talked to the group surrounding him. His preaching voice reached Jack. The man in battle armor shifted his weight, temporarily warmed by what Colin was saying. Nearby stood young Denaro, also a Walker, but looking sullen in his uniform, weapon belts crisscrossed over his chest, his militancy a kind of insult to his affiliation. Storm frowned as he watched Denaro a second longer. The Walker ministry had suffered a profound loss on Bythia. Denaro did not look as if he would tolerate it for long.