Chapter 24
Colonel Fortune watched the images coming from the front line with delight. The bridge had been assembled and his forward teams were across and on their way to the complex. The reinforcements he had scrambled from the last supply drop were on their way to join them. Though the RS Freedom’s retreat left him disappointed that these would be the last reinforcements he could expect, his pressing concern was on his own camp and his troops. They were sure to be next on the miners’ radar, but more importantly their brazen attack meant their inhibitors were offline and the scrambler dish atop the structure was vulnerable.
He had ordered the man outside his own protective field to snag it with the forward scrambler, but when the confirmation failed to arrive in his ear, Fortune grew concerned. He locked on his helmet and left his structure. Peering across the stark plain and magnifying the site in his visor, he found no sign of the lone man or his device. While he contemplated the absence, a flash of light overhead bathed the pale brown sky in a brief aura of white.
Fortune raced his gaze skyward and spotted them. A swarm of objects, maybe half the size of a cargo pod by his estimates, rocketed downward on his camp. The thin atmosphere gave them little resistance, and broadcast little warning as there was little air for them to whistle through. With as much haste as he could muster, Fortune shut down the inhibitors surrounding the camp. Then he raced for the primary scrambler and programmed it to transport him away.
As he climbed onto the platform and waited for the white light to wrap him and spirit him away, the first of the objects struck the ground. One hit his temporary office, leaving him grateful he had the foresight to get out of there when he did. Another of these objects landed near one of the inhibitors far outside the camp. Though the unit survived the initial impact, it was taken out as part of the resulting blast crater.
The light came, washing out Fortune’s glimpses of the objects raining down and sweeping away his camp. Fortunately (appropriate given his name), the light dissipated and showed him scenery far closer to the complex before the attack could claim him or his scrambler.
He took his bearings and spied the first of his own men engaging the armed miners who had taken positions inside the doorways. Their small numbers suggested they were covering a retreat. His own troops pushed forward, taking bullets as the bodies piled up. But like always, each death bought another man a few more steps closer to the goal.
Fortune took a rifle from one of the bodies long abandoned, and stepped onto the bridge. The river of lava had almost widened enough to consume the structure, so he had to hurry across. The closer he moved toward his men, the further they pushed toward the complex. With the casualties on his side, he wished he still had his scrambler so he could create some light explosives. One grenade or a small rocket would remove their position without bringing down the entire building.
Yet it was not needed. The first man got his gun around the door frame and shot one of the miners before taking a bullet himself. The man behind him, capitalized and took out the second defender. The last defense had been broken and Fortune’s men poured into the structure.
They fanned out, securing corridors and rooms. Resistance inside was light, limited to the occasional man laying down cover fire while his comrades fled further into the maze.
The Colonel joined his men at the door and proceeded inside. “Good job,” he offered to those guarding his entry as if they would be permitted to remember their contribution once the fighting was finished. Still, he offered it as he proceeded inside.
Taking an escort, he passed up the first flight of stairs and onto the walkway circling the center chamber. Hearing only the occasional gunfire, it seemed the miners had given up the complex without much of a fight. Though it concerned him greatly as to where they were retreating, his mission objectives were clear.
Fortune found the administrator’s office and sat at the desk to access the computer. When it wouldn’t boot up, he examined the unit. It had been broken into. He pulled apart the casing, and found the data stores were missing. Those miners had taken the data he was meant to retrieve.
He took up his rifle from the desk, and grabbing the pair that had been guarding him, set out to find the thief. The miners had been of no more concern than the foot soldiers he led to their own deaths. But with the data stores, he could not leave their escape to his commanding officer and his broken ship.
His first stop would be the scrambler controls. Without the station’s data, there would be no map of the facility. Since these places tended to be pretty standard, at least he had an idea it was nearby on this level.
Fortune set out on the gantry with his escort, checking every room, not only to map the place in his mind, but also to make sure none of the miners intended to spring a trap to buy time for their friends. The sound of gunfire continued to ring through the complex. Most of it was growing further and further off. His men were doing their jobs, yet he still heard the occasional shot from the central chamber below.
The Colonel kept his own rifle ready just in case. One of the privates opened the door to the room ahead, to be met with a bullet through his visor. Fortune grabbed him by back of the armor, holding the body up as a shield to bolster his own armor. When the stranger rushed from the room to face his opponents, Fortune braced the barrel of his rifle on the dead private’s shoulder and fired into his attacker’s left shoulder.
The man went down, clutching his weapon as though it were his lifeline. As he tried to get off the shot, Fortune dropped his rifle from the dead shoulder and drove another bullet into the man’s head. Though their rifles scrambled armor piercing rounds, the Colonel was grateful these facilities didn’t have plans for the same armored suits his men were using. It meant their bullets travelled through the thinner plating, bringing death much quicker.
Fortune peered into the room and, as he suspected, found the dead man had been guarding their scrambler. He raced inside to access the controls. His hands flew across the keys and his eyes skimmed the pages flashing across the monitor with the efficiency of someone well versed with these systems.
This was why the Republic valued their officers. These miners and his foot soldiers were all disposable. Anyone can learn a few rudimentary scrambler functions to run the mining processes. Anyone could learn to monitor the life support or operate the radio or figure out which cargo pods to place materials. The cargo ships they sent out into the galaxy required no special skills on their part.
Just like the privates who now roamed the rooms and hallways searching for their targets. They only had to know how to fire a rifle. That was more or less it. None of these peons, whether they were his or theirs, none of them learned any special skills or demonstrated any special abilities during the course of their integration that couldn’t be retaught in less than a day. By reintegrating their matter into storage and losing the memories they had collected, the Republic lost nothing.
On the other hand, the officers like himself and Colonel Freedom and all the lieutenants manning their stations back on the ship all had technical skills requiring a degree of intuition. Navigation was more than simply pushing a few buttons and expecting the ship to go where you wanted. Calculations had to be made. Reasons had to be deduced should the course drift.
Communications was more than secretarial work. The officer required a knack for discerning importance from the dregs. He needed to read beneath the subtext to understand if a report on a moon was a secret call for help, or if seemingly worthless personal correspondences hid new orders.
All the jobs held by officers required a certain nuance to the performance that couldn’t be taught in a five minute lecture. There was no telling how much experience was lost when he and Lieutenant Anders were killed during General Mizenov’s attack. Something as innocuous as how Freedom kept his cool while his ship was being scrambled was a lesson that would help him when he eventually received a command of his own. Like the ex
perience he picked up while putting down this rebellion, tactics and strategy were all things that could only truly be understood by living it.
As Fortune planned the meritorious medal he would submit for himself upon completion of this mission, he noticed the manifest for the station’s storage buildings. Most of the material was gone. That could only mean they had scrambled the cargo ship that was meant to transport the sum of this complex. The miners were ready to run, and they had the data.