35: Beachhead
Toron had been in combat before, but he had also spent too long on an otherwise comfortable and quiet assignment aboard the flagship of the space fleet for Calsharan Systems Union, the dreadnought-class Sword of Calshara. He had been a Lieutenant on that ship for many months, had served under Rila Cassalis, then Fleet Commander (and now self-elevated to 'Supreme Commander'). They had done little in the way of fighting, and Toron had flown endless uneventful patrols as the leader of one squadron of fighters on that ship. He had become comfortable and complacent, a problem for any serious soldier. At the time, his posting on that ship had been a stepping-stone to something greater. His own ship, perhaps a frigate or corvette to start with, a command position within the fleet. That had been his goal until his mother's illness had called him home. Family came first, his parents had drummed that into his head from an early age. If only his brother had believed the same. Still, thinking of his underachieving brother now only made him recall what he had learned only days before, regarding Valkas' eventual fate. It was still startling to think that his brother had gone back in time and become some sort of heroic war leader (not to mention, marrying Visala). Their father had named Valkas after that heroic war leader, unwitting to the fact that Valkas Kavellan was in fact the Valkas of old.
For Toron to be thrown into the thick of it so suddenly had caught him off-guard, despite having had hours to prepare for the arrival of the enemy. It was even more shocking that the enemy in question were their own people, Union soldiers sent from the home-world, yet some of them would be from one colony or another. Some would even be from Vargania, and yet here they were, shooting up a public park in the capital city of that very colony. The Union had always had its problems, but an actual civil war was unheard of. This was only the start of it, and already Toron was tired and worn out by it.
The park had become a battlefield. Hulking armoured war crawlers, each one almost as large as the landing craft that deposited them, had been dropped off in the park and on the surrounding roads. Each one drove along on sturdy caterpillar treads, their engines a faint rumble. All of them carried plasma cannons of varying intensity, including the fast-firing repeaters that were often used to mow down infantry. Some carried missile launchers or more serious beam weaponry, and it was the one a good twenty metres ahead of Toron now that had the latter. Its black metal armour was marked with small dents and scorch marks from the plasma fire, but such small arms were not terribly effective against such an armoured beast. The plasma beam fitted upon its top went off in a dazzling blue-white flash, the searing beam of pure energy lancing across the Varganian positions like some divine hand, cutting through the grass and shrubs and slicing through tree trunks in the path of its deadly embrace. It lasted only a few seconds, but the damage was severe, and Toron saw at least three of his planetary defence soldiers get cut down by its wrath. There was little left of them, with a charred pair of boots indicating the remains of one unfortunate who had emerged from his foxhole a little too early.
They were pinned down. There were dozens of Union infantry up ahead, supported by a trio of heavy crawlers. Above, fighters from both sides darted about the sky, engaged in their own airborne shooting war. Toron, crouched in a ditch by a stream that ran through the middle of the park, tried to get those soldiers of his closest to him into some kind of order. It was not easy, as most had never seen actual combat before. He saw a lot of frightened faces on those who did not wear helmets, and even through the tinted goggles the others often wore, he could sense the fear coming off of many of them. The battle was still getting started and already he could see their lines starting to falter. If they faltered, they lost. At the same time, they relied on the ships and defence platforms in orbit to keep off the bulk of the Union fighters. That was a whole other matter entirely, and one Toron did not have any control over. If they failed, then they would lose air superiority over the city and the battle would be lost.
They all had to do their part. If Vargania fell here, then this rebellion would fail and the High Protector would consolidate his power further. The colonies would see their leaderships purged and their people, at least those who dissented against this overreach of the Union government, would be harshly repressed. Toron fought for a Union free of tyranny, something that High Protector Garall had brought upon them in spades.
"I need anti-armour!" Toron turned to the Corporal at his left, a Union soldier in the standard-issue black armour. He had painted a blue stripe across his vest to indicate that he sided with the Varganians, and he along with the handful of others like him currently present on the field, appeared to be the most competent soldiers amongst the defending army. Some of the planetary defence sorts were capable enough, but most lacked the kind of training and drilled-in behaviours of the Union soldiers. And then there was Captain Lahea, who appeared alongside him on his right, ducking as a plasma cannon shot struck the ground at the edge of the ditch. The group was showered with dirt, the smell of burning grass and earth filling their nostrils. Smoke sizzled from the impact site, with small fires flaring up around the edges of the crater now left where the cannon's powerful shot had landed. Plasma fire crisscrossed the park as both sides fought, a sight that would have provided a dazzling array of blue-white light from someone looking down on them from above.
Toron brushed aside some of the dirt that had caught on his face and turned to Lahea. She was holding something out to him, a large metal disc of sorts with a small dial on it. A plasma charge of a kind, presumably an older model that the Varganian Planetary Defence Force had many of in storage.
"This should do it," she said to him, raising her voice to get heard over the din of the battle. She held a compact plasma carbine in one hand, and Toron took the magnetic charge and gave it a once-over. Both hands going back to her gun, she peered over the lip of the ditch and opened fire, sending a volley of blue energy bolts darting across the park where a few of them connected to a Union loyalist about thirty metres downrange. That soldier fell backwards into a heap, only for the hole in the ranks to be promptly filled by another outfitted just like he was.
The crawler carrying the energy beam fired it again, lancing it over the heads of those in the ditch. Toron felt the heat of it upon him, thought for one worried instant that maybe he was going to burn with it, but the beam dissipated and the air cleared almost as quickly as it had crossed over him. He was still unharmed, thankfully, but someone further down the line had had most of their head burned away, with the rest of their torso reduced to a charred, smouldering mass of warped armour and burned, sizzling flesh. That was the most troubling thing, on top of the sight of the death: the smell. It penetrated everything else around them, caught in all their nostrils and lingered there and would do so for hours after the battle was over. There was no mistaking the scent of charred Calsharan flesh, for no animal smelled quite the same way when their meat was cooked.
Someone was screaming from several metres behind. Toron became aware that at least one of those under his direct command had taken a hit, and they were quickly dragged into a hole by one of the planetary defence combat medics who were in cover a little bit behind the main action.
"We're going to need to get close with these," Toron said, referring to the magnetic charge.
"Cover me…" Lahea began, as she went to take the charge off of him. Toron shook his head, pulling it close.
"No, you're going to have to cover me." He noticed the annoyed grimace she gave and ignored it. Had it been up to him, he would have ordered her to guard a fallback position. He would have been much more comfortable had she not been here at all, even though Lahea Varollon was hardly the kind of person to run from a fight. He knew becoming involved with a fellow officer was a mistake for the very reason of the feelings he had now, that internal conflict that was already affecting his judgment at the worst possible time.
"Corporal, provide smoke." Toron turned to the regular at his left, who nodded in understanding. That Corporal then turned to the enlisted soldier to his left, and after passing on the instructions the regular pulled a smoke grenade from his waist, primed it and threw it over the top of the ditch. The device acted quickly, puking thick grey smoke that began to fill up the open space ahead of them. Through it, plasma fire continued to blaze on through. The Union forces were advancing, and as Toron looked around at his side of the battle he saw a number of his people either wounded or dead. They were outgunned, and unless they got some proper armour support of their own soon, they would likely be routed from this engagement entirely.
Toron saw Lahea's glance of disapproval for what he planned to do next. Even so, he went and did it anyway, climbing out of the ditch and into the smoke as plasma fire darted all around. In the haze, he was just as likely to get shot in the back by one of his own as he was from the front by the enemy. He kept low, one hand clenched around the magnetic charge. His other was on his plasma rifle, and he fired it one-handed at a figure off to his left he glimpsed through the smoke. A pained shout sounded off in turn, indicating that he had gunned down one of the enemy soldiers.
Moving as fast as he could, he almost ran headlong into one of the crawlers, specifically the black-armoured behemoth fitted with the plasma cannon. He dived out of its way as it came rolling towards him. Landing on his stomach, he scrambled through the overturned earth, hurrying around its right flank. As he moved, he armed the magnetic charge by pulling a simple pin. The magnet activated and he threw it against the side of the crawler, diving into the dirt with seconds to spare.
The noise of the explosion was like a roar in his ears, and he covered his head with his hands as dirt and pieces of blackened metal rained down all around. The cannon mounted atop the bulky crawler went up in a flash of brilliant blue fire, the crawler's crew being incinerated instantly. A group of the soldiers advancing near the tank were also caught in the explosion, two of them reduced to blackened husks in seconds, with another being thrown clear by several metres, both legs having been sheared away in the explosion. And then there was a fourth, flailing about and screaming as searing blue flames roiled off of them, broiling flesh and warping armour. Toron looked up to see this unfortunate victim run by him with a few metres space between them. Raising his rifle, he shot the doomed soldier in the back, silencing him and putting an end to his suffering. And for a moment there, Toron remained lying on his stomach in the dirt, the smoke from the burning tank shrouding him in a dark grey, almost choking embrace. Plasma fire zipped through it, bolts sizzling in the air. He looked to the still burning corpse of the man he had just shot, glimpsing a pair of sightless blue eyes that, for little more than a second, seemed to look his way one final time before the flames encased them entirely.
He suddenly felt sick. And before he could properly come to terms with what he had done, he felt a powerful hand grab him under one arm and pull. Toron started being dragged backwards by one arm, and he had to take a moment to gather his senses before he realised who was doing it: Lahea.
"We have to fall back," she shouted at him, pulling him down into the ditch. She spun him around to look him in the eyes. "Are you hurt?"
Toron looked at her, taking a little longer to answer than he had intended. He simply shook his head in reply. Above them, a pair of Union fighters roared overhead, and they were pursued by a Varganian one. The air-war continued, which was a good sign for it meant that the Union still did not have air superiority. That could change soon, however, and Toron knew then that Lahea was right: they had to pull back and regroup. Focus their defence around the city centre. Protect the Governor's estate and the command centre underneath.
"You're right." Toron glanced down at himself, making sure that he was still in one piece. Two Union crawlers were still on the field, and he saw then off to his right as one of them broke through their lines. Its side-mounted plasma suppression cannons fired relentlessly, a stream of energy bolts pouring out of both that ripped into those unfortunate enough to be caught in its line of fire.
"Sound the order," Toron told Lahea. "Fallback positions. Everyone."
Lahea nodded. She activated her communicator, spreading the word that they were to fall back and regroup. Immediately, the defenders began to turn and run, heading out of the public park. The park itself was now a mess of overturned, muddy earth, blackened craters and bloodied, even charred, corpses. Smoke plumed up high from numerous fires that had started amongst the former greenery, with entire clusters of trees now ablaze with orange flame, along with a few smaller spot fires that glowed a faint blue from the plasma energy that had started them.
The Corporal set off a smoke grenade then to cover their retreat. Toron led the group of about thirty he now had in his immediate command out of the park, taking them into the normally pleasant streets of Rokasham. Behind them, the Union forces continued to advance, firing at the fleeing defenders and no doubt certain of their victory. Toron would have loved to prove them otherwise, yet he could not shake the feeling that he and those who fought alongside him were simply delaying the inevitable.
It was frustrating, in a way, to be leading a battle but to not actually be there in the thick of it. Rila Cassalis, Supreme Commander of the space navy force of the Calsharan Systems Union, watched the fight in orbit play out across the display ahead of her. She was seated in the command centre of the Sword of Calshara, a ship she had missed during her time politicking on the home-world. To be seated in the commander's chair again was a welcome feeling. The ship had taken a beaten when she had led it to Sanctuary with a small attack force; an unknown alien vessel had almost destroyed the pride of the fleet. Such a thing would not happen again, for they were prepared for just such a ship.
Here and now, however, she had no need to worry over bizarre ancient alien spacecraft. She had with her a sizeable taskforce and they were faced with an inferior opponent. The colonials had numbers, certainly, but they were outgunned. The planetary defence vessels were mostly older models, and the few Union starships they had in the mix would not be enough to make up the balance. Cassalis intended to execute any commander of those Union vessels who had sided with the insurrectionists, if they happened to be taken alive.
The command information centre was a large room deep in the heart of the ship, arranged in a vague oval formation with Cassalis in the centre of it. Monitors and displays manned by officers of varying ranks gathered all pertinent information from about the ship and controlled its various functions. It was full of chatter, with the burly grey-skinned Captain, Karal, standing by the central console with a communicator to his ear that he spoke rapidly into. He directed fighters, whilst another officer standing across from him instructed the gun batteries currently defending the ship from the Varganian fighters and bombers buzzing around outside. Cassalis said little as her subordinates organized the battle, all she could do was watch on the main view-screen, a screen that took up much of the wall ahead of her. It also had picture-in-picture options, with Cassalis flicking through one outside scanner feed to another in order to get a closer look of the battle whilst the array of red and green indicators danced about the scanner screen itself. Each one was a friendly or enemy fighter, with their line of capital ships keeping back for the time being. Some of their landing craft had made it through, as had a handful of their strategic bombers which would go after important military targets on the surface. The overall objective was to quash this insurrection here and now, prevent it from gaining further traction.
Cassalis intended to finish this before the day was through. She would return to the home-world a hero and she would be able to focus on raising her son. A son she would raise to follow after her, perhaps even become a High Protector himself. Not that she would recommend such a position. To her, it was much better to be the power behind the throne.
"Commander?" Captain Karal called her from the central console, a hexagonal affair on which a holographic display of the battle was being projected. Cassalis, in her full naval uniform complete with gold and silver epaulettes that denoted her high station, rose to her feet and strode over to the console. Karal pulled a data-pad from the console, handing it to her. Reports from those on the ground.
"Our ground forces have engaged a large force of planetary defence troops in the capital," Karal explained. "We are taking casualties, but nothing beyond what we predicted."
"Are they within the vicinity of the Governor's estate?" Cassalis asked him. She did not read through the reports then and there; the Captain would have done just that and so had all the details fresh in his memory.
"Close. We could send our bombers to level the place." The suggestion had crossed Cassalis' mind, but she shook her head.
"No, we don't want to anger the locals any further. Besides, the place has a bunker underneath that would be shielded from most of what we can throw at it, short of levelling the entire city. I want that estate in our hands and secured within the next two hours." She checked the small chronometer at her left wrist. "I want to be back home in time for dinner. I have a boy now to take care of."
"Yes, I heard, Commander. You have my congratulations on the birth."
Cassalis smiled. This battle was a distraction, a loose end she wanted sorted. Her mind was primarily on her son, who was in good hands being in the care of her sister, the nurse.
She thought she heard a faint rumble then, some glancing fire that had caused the ship's shields to flare up, but it was over almost as soon as it happened. Still, it was a sobering reminder of just where she was right now and the chaos happening right outside the ship.
Urban warfare was messy, always was. There were battles cropping up around Rokasham in multiple locations. In Toron's spot, it was a fighting retreat, faced as they were with a much better armed and better trained force. It was with this in mind that Toron figured they would have to fight dirty, instead of simply meeting the enemy on open ground as if it was some kind of black powder gun battle. They had to even the playing field somehow, and Toron was not going to wait for any of Vargania's armoured forces to show up. They were likely preoccupied elsewhere, and like their defence fleet, their armoured vehicles were mostly older, less sophisticated models compared to those at the disposal of the Union forces.
The sounds of battle could be heard far off in the distance. Buildings had caught fire about the city, others having been reduced to rubble. The usually pleasant city of Rokasha; it was a place that Toron had found to provide a relaxed, quiet atmosphere unlike the rampant activity of the capital on the home-world, and here and now he could not help but feel some small regret at seeing the city become this way. Not for centuries had a Calsharan city been the site of a battle such as this, certainly not anything within the inner colonies. That is, the original six settled thousands of years previously when the secret of hyperspace travel had first been cracked. The great diaspora had seen Calsharan citizens spread across the stars on board legions of ships, taking their differing cultures and attitudes with them. In turn, the worlds they had settled had become fiercely independent, and civil wars had been almost routine before the time of Visala. It seemed that old tradition was coming back, once again in response to gross overreach and abuse of power by the central government.
Toron and the dozen troopers who had followed him into this neighbourhood bundled into the ground floor of a restaurant. The place was empty, the occupants and owners having left with the general civilian evacuation. The restaurant floor, the tables moved to one side and the chairs stacked upon them, provided a fairly open room for the rapidly shrinking company to collect themselves and for Toron to formulate a plan. Lahea was there with him, her uniform and her face marked with dirt. Yet, her spirits seemed high despite the fighting retreat and the fact that their enemies were not far behind.
"I need half of us on the upper level," Toron ordered, the eyes of those civil defence soldiers around him all fixed on him, all looking for guidance. Outside, a trio of planetary defence soldiers ran on by, ignoring those they saw inside the restaurant, opting to instead head their own way in an attempt to desert the battle entirely. In the Union military, desertion was a serious enough offence that execution was often the punishment those caught doing it received. Toron did not know what protocol they had in place for deserters in the Varganian Planetary Defence Force, not that it mattered. That was something they would deal with after the battle, whichever way it went.
"The rest, stay down here. Don't shoot at anything until we do upstairs." Toron paced around the counter. One of the soldiers, the Union Corporal who had been with him since the battle had started, paused to pick up a bottle of something sweet and fruity from the shelf behind the counter. He popped off the cap as he walked, gulping down the contents with relish.
Toron led the way to the rooms upstairs. Outside, he could hear the rumble of the Union crawlers, treads and wheels grinding audibly upon the road. Toron kicked open a door past the top of the stairs, entering a plain room that was being used as storage. Here, boxes of basic foodstuffs were piled up all around. He came to a window that looked down upon the street below, which was currently empty. That would not be the case for long.
The Corporal and Lahea were there with him. Toron turned to the Union Corporal, recalling his name from when someone had shouted it to him earlier: Doska. Corporal Doska. He seemed sensible enough.
"We're going to hit them as they pass," Toron told him and Lahea. The others who had followed them upstairs spread out into neighbouring rooms. They could hear the crawler coming, accompanied by a whole squad of infantry, no less. They were going right down a main street and in the direction of the Governor's estate, intent on cutting the head off of this rebellion.
"What about the crawler, sir?" The Corporal asked him, one brow-ridge cocked slightly. A valid question, one Toron had no definite answer for.
"We take out their soldiers. Go for the officers and work your way down. As for the crawler, we can't do much. That's why as soon as it turns its gun on us, we run. There should be a back door here, always is." He turned to Lahea, who had crouched by one of the windows and was peering through it, directing her gaze further back up the street and into the direction from whence they had come.
"Captain, you don't have another charge on you?"
She shook her head, offering him a regretful look.
"Afraid not, Captain."
No harm in asking. Toron sidled up to her right, at a neighbouring window. Outside, the mid-morning sun continued to shine. At the very least, visibility was good for the battle. Of course, that worked both ways. With the way things were going, the battle would not last until nightfall anyway. Toron briefly mused over what it would be like, to be tried as a traitor to the Union. That would happen if they lost and he let himself get caught; as much as he liked to believe he would not let that happen, somehow he figured that he would not get much of a choice in the matter.
He checked his plasma rifle, ensuring that the weapon was charged and the heat-sink was within normal parameters. An overheated gun was no use to anyone. In extreme cases, overheating could lead to overloading. And an overloaded plasma rifle could go up in spectacular fashion. Most weapons were designed to prevent this altogether. Toron toyed with the idea of turning such a weapon into an impromptu explosive charge, but his would not allow it and those others available to him now would be the same. He would need a weapon at least fifty years old, perhaps more for overloading to be a viable option.
"I see it," Lahea called, and she ducked back down and readied her carbine. The crawler was trundling down the street, flanked by armoured Union infantry. There had to be a dozen of them, with two at the crawler's sides and the rest following it at the rear in a standard two-by-two formation. They moved at a steady pace, not at all in a hurry, likely because they knew that the battle was going their way. The defenders of Rokasham were a ragtag bunch, whereas in comparison those loyalists the High Protector had sent were of a more hardened variety. Had Toron stuck with his posting on the Sword of Calshara, had his mother not fallen ill and had his father not been arrested and executed, then chances are he would be among the attack force. He would be up there, on that dreadnought, doing his part to direct the battle to essentially subjugate a disgruntled colony. Fate had weaved him a different destiny it seemed, and despite everything he felt it was the for the better. At least here, he could feel sure that he was doing the right thing. Siding with the tyranny of the High Protector would not have sat well with him, had he still been a Lieutenant aboard the Sword of Calshara.
"Hold your fire until I say," Toron instructed. The trio waited, as did the others keeping low at the various windows lining the building. It was an older brick structure, the sort that had stood for one-hundred years or more, its interior going from one thing to another. It being a restaurant was simply the latest in a long line of things that had been in here.
The column, with the crawler at the head of it, came slowly down the street. They passed the building slowly, the soldiers around the vehicle taking in their surroundings carefully, eyes searching every window they could. They knew that any window, any doorway or any little gap in general could house a hostile; that from anywhere at anytime, they could be fired upon by a disgruntled local. Invading armies often learned these lessons the hard way, as this bunch were about to. Toron levelled the sight of his rifle squarely on the chest of the officer amongst the group, their rank denoted by little more than a silver highlight about the shoulder pauldrons of their armour. Long gone were the days of flamboyantly wearing your rank in battle; such regalia only made you a more attractive target. Even so, one still had to be able to identify their own officers at a glance, and this one was a Captain. Much like Toron, and the thought made him pause ever so slightly before he fired. They were the enemy, most certainly, but they were still Calsharan.
He fired nonetheless. The officer went down in a heap, smoke wafting off of the sizzling hole that had been shot through his chest armour. The other soldiers scrambled immediately, and a Sergeant in more rugged armour began belting out orders. The crawler also stopped, its main cannon going to turn about to face the building. However, the barrel on the plasma cannon was that little bit too long for the narrow street, and as such it could not come all the way around to face the old building.
The others opened fire then, showering the enemy column with plasma fire. Toron fired with them, finger working the trigger on his plasma rifle rapidly, sending another two of the soldiers down, the Sergeant being one of them. The rest began to scatter, faced with the wall of plasma fire, but they had nowhere to go in the little or no time they had. The eager civil defence soldiers taking up the windows of the restaurant poured on the fire even after the last of the column had gone down, spurred on by anger and resentment and the fact that the crawler could not turn its gun their way. It was starting to reverse now, intent on giving itself enough space to turn the weapon towards the building.
"Scatter!" Toron shouted, when he saw what it was doing. The crawler ended up driving over the bodies of its own that were strewn about the street behind it. Each time it went over one, armour was crushed and bones crunched audibly along with it. The soldiers had been gunned down in a matter of seconds; Toron loitered a little longer by the window than he should have, unable to take his eyes off of the bulky crawler and the powerful cannon mounted upon it. That very cannon was tilting up to face him now, as if the gunner had somehow singled him out amongst everyone else.
Toron was thrown back upon his haunches when the crawler, and not himself, exploded into a plume of flame and twisted metal. The entire building shook around him and the windows, just about every one on this side of it, shattered in turn. Toron, thinking for a second that the crawler had fired his way, scrambled up to the now mostly empty window opening to confirm that yes, somehow the crawler had been destroyed. Something had blasted it from the rear, hitting it just right to cripple the gun, which was now a warped and twisted heap of smoking black metal. Even so, a hatch at the top of the crawler popped open and the crawler's commander emerged. A thick trail of black smoke followed him, and Toron watched with interest as the commander threw himself over the edge of the vehicle. Both of his legs were missing, Toron realised, left as ragged stumps just above the knees. Toron could not turn away from the sorry image of the tank commander trying to pull himself along the ground and away from the flaming heap that had been his vehicle. The commander might have made it, had he got proper medical attention. Instead, a volley of plasma small arms fire darted from somewhere down the street and tore into his side, causing him to twitch before he finally fell still in the road. The crawler continued to burn and no other crew members emerged from within.
Toron rose to his feet and left the room, finding Lahea downstairs with the others. She followed him out into the street, where a single grey armoured carrier had appeared, coming to a stop several metres behind the destroyed crawler. It was adorned with the Varganian flag, painted the grey blue of the planetary defence force. Behind it were about twenty soldiers in the grey-blue armour also of the defence force. Nothing unusual about them, although Toron had not been expecting to see armour support anytime soon.
The armoured carrier was a slim, agile vehicle intended for mobility above outright firepower. Nonetheless, it had a long, powerful gun mounted upon it, enough to punch through the rear armour of a Union crawler. From his place clinging to the side of it came Jorran Casker, the elusive and fugitive Vigilant. He was outfitted in his usual rugged, black garb. He met the Captain a few metres ahead of the tank and offered him a beaming smile.
"My favourite Captain," Jorran said, only half-jokingly. "I managed to get us some help."
"Where did you find them?" Toron asked, referring to the armoured carrier and the soldiers with it. Behind him, Lahea and the rest of his ragtag group looked on, some of the soldiers there appearing very much relieved.
"Trouble with the commander-in-charge of the armoured divisions, something about him not wishing to be involved in a rebellion." Jorran retained his beaming, toothy smile. "I sorted it out, don't worry. There'll be more of these machines coming into the city soon."
'Sorted out' likely meant killing the problem, although Toron did not say as much out loud.
"I also have it on good authority that a force from Tornya is on the way," Jorran added. Again, he smiled. "I may have persuaded their Governor to devote the resources before she left yesterday. She is a very, shall we say, demanding woman." With that, Jorran shifted a little uneasily where he stood. Toron was not sure if he wanted to imagine what had transpired or not. The news about the potential reinforcements was welcome, of course.
"So that's where you've been?" Toron had begun to wonder where the fugitive Vigilant had gone. "Sorting things out?"
"With any and all means at my disposal," Jorran replied. He motioned for Toron to follow. "Now, get your people together and follow me. We need to rethink our defensive strategy and we need to hold until our allies from Tornya arrive."
"Rethink it?" Toron frowned. He was still a little breathless from the scrape with the crawler, even more so by the bodies now littering the street. He stepped in a puddle of blood, glancing down at the deep red footprint the sole of his boot left after it. Calsharan blood, the last sort he thought he would end up spilling in a fight when he joined the military.
"How much more 'rethinking' does it need?" He added. They stopped by the parked armoured carrier. Lahea lingered a few paces behind, whilst the dozen or so soldiers who had been with Toron began to mingle with the new arrivals. Words and remarks were exchanged, as well as a few laughs.
"They have us outgunned."
"Maybe, but we know the terrain better than they do." Jorran sounded remarkably calm, given the circumstances. Toron supposed that was how all Vigilants operated; to remain as calm and collected as if a fight for one's life was as normal as walking down the street and to the store. "We also know, and very few people here are aware, that the Governor is not in his estate. The enemy is going that way because they wish to sever the leadership and quell this rebellion quickly. They will be sorely disappointed if they happen to get inside and find the Governor and his staff gone. A quick victory is not on the cards for the Union, but they don't know that yet. We do, and this gives us an edge because we know where the enemy is going and, as a result, can funnel and herd them where we please." Jorran recited this all off like a professor before a class in a lecture hall, and he eyed Toron with a curious gaze as he attempted to gauge whether or not the young Captain understood what he was getting at.
"How close are they to the estate now?" Toron asked him. He had not received any further word from the General, so he had to assume the situation there was normal.
"Close, but not too close. There are still plenty of defenders hindering their advance. We simply need to stall for time. Our allies will be here, soon."
"The Governor of Tornya gave you her word?"
"That she did." Jorran climbed back upon the side of the carrier, grasping upon a handhold there. "Come on, Captain. Mount up. There is still plenty of work to be done."
Toron felt his hopes rise a little, but not too much, as he climbed onto the back of the carrier's armoured frame. The troopers, with Lahea at the lead of them, fell into formation behind the vehicle as it started on its way, beginning with a somewhat awkward reverse back out of the narrow street and onto the wider one some distance behind it. Off in the distance, the fighting continued, with the occasional rumble or thump of something exploding echoing across the city. Toron looked to Lahea, marching behind the carrier, and she smiled at him. He smiled back, feeling for the first time since this battle had started some relief. If Jorran was right, then their allies from Tornya would be here. How soon was anyone's guess, but Tornya was close in astronomical terms. A few hours in hyperspace would be all it would take to get between here and there. That meant a few more hours of bloody urban fighting, and the small measure of relief that Toron had felt then faded suddenly. Now, all he could do was focus his full attention upon the battle at hand and the soldiers under his command. Never had he felt the burden of the latter so immensely, especially now that he had seen so many die whilst fighting alongside him.
