Chương 55: The Ambush at Ha’veth

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum January 13, 2848 Arc, and each of the other cadets in Professor DeVault's Applied Tactics and Simulations course, were each given a cubicle of their own in which to work. The cubicles were situated on the lowest level of the dome, along the outside wall of the building, and a semi-circular corridor connected them.

"Good luck," Ireti Ọlatẹru told him, as she and the cluster of younger cadets following her paused outside the open doorway where she'd deposited him.

"This space will be yours for the duration of the current semester, and it's keyed to your neural lace, biometrics, and AI. Professors, TAs, and Skuld have override privileges, of course." He almost asked her about whether she'd found him a sparring partner, but decided to wait until there weren't half a dozen other students around. Instead, he watched as Cal, Kievit Red Crest and the rest continued along the curved corridor to the next room.

Then, he closed the door to his cubicle and settled into a comfortable, padded chair in front of the holo-projector. It was a plain, gray room, with no ornamentation to speak of. There was a small desk for his tablet, and once Arc was seated, a miniature image of Skuld appeared in the air at the center of the room.

"Good morning, Cadet Sandhurst; Iceni," Skuld began.

"I have a simulation based on our records of Admiral Wai's initial ground-probe against an outlying Na'Xir hive on the largest island of the northern archipelago. You have the same troops and equipment as the field commander was given, and you will be facing the same forces, with only the information our ground commanders actually had. Your mission is to assess the Na'xir forces and their installations, returning with actionable intelligence on their combat capabilities.

I'm giving Iceni authorization to start the simulation at any time; you may also reset from the beginning as many times as you would like, between now and the end of the class. If you require my assistance, or have a question, simply call my name, or ask Iceni to get my attention."

"Thank you," Arc said, and the image disappeared.

"Alright. Let's see what Wai gave us to work with," he said. Putting our force composition up in the holo-tank, Iceni told him. The overhead lights automatically dimmed, and a moment later, floating images of mechs, vehicles, and soldiers populated the open space in the middle of the room, along with text labels and numbers.

"This looks like a fairly fast moving combined arms company," Arc mused.

"A bit understrength." He leaned forward, stretched out his arms, and grabbed the images, pulling them apart to expand and zoom in. The core of the force was, in Arc's mind, the squad of ground mechs. It was a standard group: one Outrider to scout and spot for the Culverin, and two Janissaries for assault or reinforcing a line of infantry.

None of the mechs had been substantially modified or configured with unusual weapons, though Arc could see that both the Outrider and one of the Culverins each carried a plasma blade, magnetically locked to one hip. A forty-eight man marine platoon, with each of the four squads carried by its own Pronghorn infantry mobility vehicle, formed the bulk of the company, supported by a squad of four Saker VTOLs.

Arc grabbed that formation and pulled the holograms forward, because it was the weapon loadout he was least familiar with.

"One rotary autocannon in a turret mounted beneath the cockpit, and eight short-range missiles on each wing," Arc said aloud.

"Combined with the Sakers and the mechs, that's a lot of ballistics. The whole group is light on energy weapons." Would you have chosen differently? Iceni asked.

"Well, if this is meant to be a probing assault, against an enemy we've never fought before, I'd want to have a decent balance of options," Arc told her.

"Autocannons could be the best thing against the Na'xir, but that isn't guaranteed. If the support vehicles are going to carry a total of eight autocannons, I think I'd want more lasers on the mechs than they brought. But let's see what we can do. Pull up the terrain, put our forces right where they landed, and mark anything they knew about when they went in there on the map." Displaying map, Iceni said. Arc couldn't help but let out a long, low whistle at what he saw.

Ha'veth—the system that the Imperium had labelled LHS 1140, until the LeShaii had joined—centered on a red dwarf star, sketching the scene in shades which felt distinctly unnatural to Arc. Every leaf, every bit of flora evolved to drink in sunlight, was pitch black. The colors blue and green practically seemed non-existent, and the sea faded from a dark brown in the deeps to a sort of light orange just offshore.

There, Arc could see the structure of fisheries; much of the island was criss-crossed by roads, and the lowlands, near the shore, had been cleared of forest to make way for towns. The architecture of the LeShaii was strange—wide, low structures with curved rooms, often segmented like shells. And at the center of each settlement, Arc could see a sort of plinth or obelisk of crystal.

The particular island the Na'xir had chosen to build their hive on was shaped like someone had loaded a brush with black paint and then flung it at the map. The western side was the thickest, with a ridgeline that extended off the north and then curved east like an uncoiling bullwhip.

Just southeast of the whip's base, a sort of dagger shape thrust out into the muddy-brown ocean, and beneath that, a stretch of land that seemed to sort of fall apart or dissolve into clumps and small, rocky promontories that finally disappeared in the sea to the southeast. The hive was, of course, situated on the most substantial part of the landmass, to the west, while Admiral Wai had dropped his probing force on the dagger.

That left the imperium forces something like—Arc called up a scale—three hundred kilometers to travel overland. The Sakers could cross that distance in an hour, Iceni said. They could get a look at the hive and relay that information back.

"That would also leave them completely isolated and without support, while we don't know what kind of aerial capabilities the Na'xir have," Arc pointed out.

"This isn't a situation where fleet has established control of the airspace. Sending them alone is a risk, and we'd have to assume that we don't get them back." Arc chewed on his lip for a minute.

"You have access to just about every military record in the history of the imperium, don't you?" I do, Iceni said. But I was not designed to be a tactical model. I was designed to facilitate the connection between my pilot and a mech, and to offer support to my pilot in whatever way I can. Additionally, I have found that there is a substantial difference between theoretical knowledge, and practical experience. Arc chuckled.

"In only a few months?" Yes. Lyra and I examined approximately five-hundred thousand different pieces of media which purported to demonstrate human courtship and mating habits, so that we could be of use to you and Cassie, Iceni went on. However, our comparative analysis has determined that this material is wildly inaccurate compared to your actual behavior, not to mention physical specifications.

"—you and Lyra have been watching romance holo-dramas," Arc said. Yes.

"Does Cassie know? Never mind, don't answer that," Arc grumbled.

"Let's focus on what we've got here." He reached out to touch his units, then stabbed his fingers to create waypoints on the map.

"The Outrider goes ahead to scout, obviously. Everything else moves in a group, except for the Sakers." Arc checked the specifications of the VTOLs again.

"They can only stay in the air for about five hours, so we're going to leave three of them back at the landing site, and send the fourth to provide air support while the formation is moving. We'll swap which one is in the air every hour." The projection of the island rotated, zooming in, and Arc could see the holographic representations of his units moving, with the Outrider storming ahead of the rest of his vehicles.

Two things became clear very quickly: first, the Na'xir had not deliberately destroyed any of the LeShaii roads on the island, which was good for Arc's Pronghorns. Secondly, they had already begun terraforming the planet to their own needs. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Rising oxygen levels to the east of the island, Iceni confirmed, once she'd interpreted the initial data from the instruments of the Outrider and the single Saker that Arc had ordered into the air. Wind patterns make it a bit difficult to track, of course, but we now have enough evidence to support an assumption that something near or in the hive is actively changing the composition of the local atmosphere. Arc made a note on his tablet.

"Alright, that's a piece of intelligence the admiral would want to know," he decided.

"We're going to want to get a visual identification and a specific location on whatever's affecting the atmosphere. That's the kind of target which is going to be important in a campaign—especially if they can't operate without some kind of environmental suit in our normal atmosphere. And it's the sort of critical infrastructure they're going to have to defend. Can we fast forward this simulation to the first point of contact?" Let me see—yes, Iceni answered. That is permitted.

"Do it, and then pause," Arc ordered. The holographic projection jittered and skipped forward, the locations of his Sakers, Pronghorns, and mechs shifting suddenly. The Outrider, he saw, had reached the place where the dagger-shaped protrusion of land met the base of the main part of the island. The pilot of the Outrider reports multiple aerial contacts, Iceni told him. They have activated their Adaptive Camouflage Armor, their electronic countermeasures, and they have stopped moving.

Visual image of contacts displayed. Arc leaned forward and frowned, examining the still frame. It depicted a horror out of nightmares: four legs for locomotion, two arms ending in opposable claws for fine manipulation, two enormous pincers, and a set of membranous, buzzing wings attached to the back of the torso. Thorax? The thing wore some kind of backpack, with tanks attached, and a sort of breathing mask, which seemed to confirm Arc's earlier suspicions.

It also carried something which was unmistakably a rifle-analogue in its arms.

"Do we have a size estimate?" he asked. A meter and a half in length, and somewhere around fifty kilograms, at a rough guess, Iceni said. They're quite fast, as well. They'd easily outpace any of the other mechs, but perhaps not the Outrider.

"They're a closer equivalent to infantry than any kind of vehicle," Arc decided.

"Tag them Na'xir Aeriel Troops for me, please." Glowing text labels bloomed to life on the projected map—more than two dozen. Arc grabbed the map, spun it around, and zoomed in, quickly scanning over the road that the Outrider had followed, which led back to the main force of his troops. He had data from the scout mech, which was good, because it meant he could find exactly what he needed. What are you looking for? Iceni asked.

"A good place to set an ambush," he explained.

"Someplace that has a bit of cover, and—here." A stretch of road had been cut out from the rising rock of the foothills, which led up to the ridgeline at the center of the island. The sheared rock surfaces loomed up above the route his troops would be taking, perhaps ten meters above, or just a hair short of that. At each side, the top of the rock faces was wooded, and the road itself was only twenty four meters across. Arc smiled.

"Our main force is to dig in at this point," Arc said, marking the ambush site.

"I want both Janissaries in the front. Marines up on the heights, a twelve-man squad each. The other two can use the Pronghorns to anchor their lines here, just behind the Janissaries, and the Culverin should set up at the rear. All Sakers in the air. The Outrider needs to let itself be seen, and then draw the enemy back into the ambush. Orders are to target those breathing tanks, and cycle through different types of weapons to get data. Start the simulation again."

This time, he let things run without skipping ahead. Arc watched as the Outrider waited until the enemy flyers were within visual range, then stood up and de-activated its adaptive armor. When the flyers began to move toward it, the pilot headed back to the east, withdrawing along the road.

"Just fast enough to stay ahead of them," Arc said, and Iceni relayed the command. Contacts are within range of the Culverin's railguns and missiles, Iceni said a few moments later. Targeting data from the Outrider is sufficient for indirect bombardment. Arc shook his head.

"Not yet. We'll use those big guns to keep any of them from escaping, but this is a fact-finding mission. The admiral wants to know what they can do." In the holographic projection, the Outrider dashed into the cut between the two rock faces, and the Na'xir flyers followed. Arc could see the moment they spotted the rest of his troops, because the swarm of flyers immediately tried to scatter and break in half a dozen different directions.

Unfortunately for them, the rock faces limited their options: they either needed to continue on, right into his waiting forces, fly up to get out of the ambush and into open sky, or retreat.

"All units fire," Arc ordered. The Outrider's pilot dropped their mech to one knee and swung their CO-4 laser rifle, the same one the academy's Tyros used, up. A cerulean line connected the end of the barrel with one of the flying Na'xir, and it simply ceased to exist. At the same time, every marine and pilot who'd been waiting in ambush at Arc's orders opened up with everything they had. From the heights, BA-50 flechette rifles roared in short bursts.

Four roof-mounted autocannons, from each of the Pronghorns, spat shells. The Janissary on the left raised its right arm and let out a gout of fire from its Thermic Labs flamethrower, while the assault mech on the right took a shot with its shoulder mounted IMT plasma accelerator. Three oxygen tanks burst under the onslaught of the flamethrower, exploding and throwing the Na'xir soldiers who wore them to the ground.

Another four flying soldiers caught fire themselves, even if their tanks hadn't ruptured yet, and flew straight up in a panic, desperate to escape—directly into the incoming flight of Sakers, which opened up with their own autocannons. Within the space of moments, the enemy flyers were dead, to the man.

"Freeze simulation," Arc said.

"Back up and play that again for me at one-tenth speed. Do you see that, Iceni?" They are reacting to the bullets, the AI said, with hardly a pause for analysis. They can't move fast enough to evade lasers, and the flamethrower covers too large of an area, but they are actually dodging the autocannons.

"Somewhat," Arc agreed.

"It looks like they have a hard time getting out of the way entirely, but they're certainly reacting quicker than any human could. You're going to have to run numbers and compare them to every species in the Imperium, with and without genetic modifications." That has almost certainly already been done, Iceni said, in order to make this simulation work.

"Right." Arc sighed. For a moment, he'd been so immersed in the problem that he'd forgotten what he was seeing wasn't actually happening. Admiral Wai wasn't actually waiting on his data—he'd gotten what he was going to get, from someone else, weeks or months before.

"Anyway, that exoskeleton they've got also seems partially resistant to bullets. Am I right about that?" It does better against the flechettes than the heavier autocannons, Iceni specified. But yes.

"I knew I wanted more lasers," Arc grumbled.

"Alright, move everything up. I want to get close enough to get a good look at whatever's screwing with the atmosphere, and we also need to draw out some heavier troops. Slaughtering outnumbered and outgunned infantry doesn't tell us much of value." Thankfully, the aerial troops must have gotten off a message before they were killed. If the Na'xir operated by anything like the Imperium's troops, they would have called back to their commander or their base the moment they first made contact with the Outrider.

Whoever was telling the swarm soldiers what to do wasn't an idiot, either; they correctly put one and one together and got two. Their patrol had made contact with an enemy, pursued, and been eliminated, and that meant a substantial force. The Na'xir commander responded with everything they could get together at short notice. The swarm troops came in sight when Arc's force crested the rise of a ridge, from which the road led down toward what had once been a LeShaii city, and was now the location of the hive.

At the base of the hill, hundreds of alien warriors advanced on foot in squads. The infantry were taller and heavier—two and a half meters, the simulation informed him, and upwards of two-hundred kilograms in mass. Rather than wings, they had thick, overlapping plates of chitin colored a gray so dark it was almost black, and they held rifles with some sort of bladed bayonet at the end. More of the flying scouts soared overhead of the advance.

Walking among them came six enormous beasts that had to be the Na'xir mech equivalents. They had eight legs each, thick carapaces, and a scorpion-like tail with a wicked stinger. At twelve meters tall and, Arc saw, upwards of thirty tons, they were nearly the size of a Tyro. Each had been fitted with a sort of war harness which included not only tanks and a breathing apparatus, but two of what looked like laser cannons, one mounted to each side of the torso.

"There you are," Arc whispered to himself, and he couldn't help but smile.

"Let's see what it takes to kill you."