When the Stars Fade (The Gray Wars) Read online

  As the moons continued to rise over the plateau, Josh waited for the signal from his teams.

  * * * * *

  Captain Thornton stared at a shadow between two tents, unblinking. It was thirty minutes to midnight, and he was up checking on his recon elements that just returned from the field. It was the first night in two weeks that the entire company slept in one area, and the commanding officer was understandably tense. If their position had been discovered, a single mortar attack could be devastating.

  Juno, the company First Sergeant, walked beside his commander. He didn’t worry about mortars, as most of the units had expended their rounds in the opening months of the games. Foolish wastes, he thought. The final days were when the munitions would be needed most. He congratulated himself on his foresight once again, smirking in his usual way that often put the soldiers off. The First Sergeant always seemed to be laughing at his own personal joke, and his particular brand of humor involved misery for the rest of the troops.

  “Sir, is there something wrong?”Juno asked.

  Thornton remained frozen in place. He could swear he’d seen something moving, but what? His night vision was lamentable, and the lax light discipline wasn’t helping matters. They’d scouted the area for days before moving in, and he knew that no one could spot their glowing chemical lights from anywhere in the surrounding canyons, but the soldier inside growled at the use of such luxury items.

  “Did you see that, top?”The captain pointed to just behind the mess tents.

  Juno stared, but couldn’t make out anything unusual.“Nothing there now. What did you see?”Even if he didn’t know what the CO was talking about, he’d known Thornton long enough to work with him on his hunches.

  “There was movement behind the tents,”Thornton said.

  First Sergeant thought for a moment.“Could have been the relief for the guard towers. Maybe they’re changing out early tonight.”

  “Why early?”

  Juno shrugged.“Only a few days left, kids get excited. It’s hard to sit here and do nothing, so they look for work to do.”Even as he said it, the words felt wrong in his mouth. Something pricked the hairs on the back of his neck.“Sir, maybe we should pull a few more soldiers onto guard.”

  Captain Thornton didn’t respond. Something new had caught his eye. Something in the north tower.

  * * * * *

  At five minutes to midnight the team settled into position. The HMG crews sighted their targets and set up small sticks to control their cone of fire. With support gunners standing by holding spare barrels and a rifleman guarding the entrance to the towers, the raid was set. All it needed was a trigger.

  Josh clicked his radio four times, the signal for the countdown. A moment later, three clicks came from the southern tower. He imagined Dax hulking over, the bipod legs of the three-barreled DaVinci machine gun resting on the guardrail facing the camp and the butt firmly planted in his shoulder. Another three clicks, signaling the north tower set and in position. Alexa’s soldiers would have their ammunition set out in lines beside their feet for easy access on reloading. The support gunner would watch the belt feed through the weapon until only an arm’s length remained before connecting the new line. They trained this way for just this situation, when a single mistake meant the end for everyone around them.

  Josh gripped his radio, his jaw set, and clicked twice. For five seconds the silence persisted, and then the world erupted. Fire from both towers tore into the tents in the center of the camp. Josh saw two men standing in the center of the base cut down in a single burst, not enough enough time to draw their pistols. Shelters exploded as the sim rounds ripped through them. Soldiers would have been sleeping, completely oblivious to the frenzy around them. He almost felt bad for Delta, but pushed the thought out of his mind. A group of soldiers shouted to attack the towers, and they charged back toward his position to flank the positions. As the riflemen approached, Josh and his team picked them off one by one.

  Josh let the machine guns work through the camp, saturating the area with fire. There was no reason to hold back. Either they won the fight and secured ammunition from Delta’s stock, or they would run out and be killed. Fortune favors the bold, as his dad would to say. He watched the massacre unfold, firing sporadically at soldiers trying to escape. Even if a few managed to run east out of the camp, they would either wander until the ending siren a few days later, get picked up by the safeties, or get killed by one of Alpha’s sniper teams.

  When Dax’s tower went silent, Josh knew the fight was over. He called over the radio.“Cease fire, cease fire.”The northern post quieted.“Hold positions, we’re moving in.”He called his small team of shooters together and they formed a line. Weapons at the ready, they marched forward to clear the area.

  Two soldiers popped up from behind an overturned storage bin. At first they didn’t recognize Josh and his group, then they went for their rifles. The team dropped them quickly and moved on. In the center of the base they found Captain Thornton and Delta’s First Sergeant. Throughout the exercise, Josh had found the simulated“death”soldiers endured slightly unnerving. The sedatives produced a pleasant dream state that lasted two to three hours, in which time the safeties on the course came in to retrieve the soldiers and move them to the staging areas until the exercise ended. The corpses looked peaceful which, combined with a lack of blood, made the scene surreal.

  Josh knelt down by the enemy CO and pulled his dog tags out. He pulled his radio from his shoulder, surveying the damage his squad had caused.“Dax, Alexa. Bring it in. Leave the gunners in position and tell them to watch for anyone coming back our way.”A few minutes later, he had his team leaders with him in the battered command tent while the team policed the bodies. Delta soldiers were laid out under a tent near the front for easier access by the safeties. The rest of the squad went through the camp and retrieved weapons and ammunition.

  “Damn, that couldn’t have gone better.”Dax slapped Josh on the back hard enough to nearly knock him over. He set his DaVinci on the ground, the barrels still red and smoking.“Picture perfect, better than that ambush.”

  “It takes a talented team to pull it off,”Josh said.“You guys did an amazing job. I don’t think they even knew what him them.”He was feeling good, better than he had in weeks.

  Alexa took off her helmet, wiping her sweaty forehead clear.“Quick says the armory is stocked. Mortars, mines, grenades—you name it, it’s ours.”

  Josh nodded, making a mental checklist.“We can’t sleep here, but we can’t leave the ammo. Put together a detail and start distributing everything we can carry. We’re moving out as soon as we’re full up, find a place to set down.”

  Dax’s jaw dropped.“Why can’t we stay here? Everyone’s dead.”

  “We just made a hell of a lot of noise. Even if Alpha doesn’t know where this place is, they know something went down in this direction. It’s not worth waiting around for them to find us just to grab an extra hour’s rack.”

  “He’s right,”Alexa said.“If I were a scout out there, I’d be talking this one up all night. At the very least, they’ll send a team to watch this canyon in the morning.”She took a drink from her pack.“We’d be spotted when we left.”

  The big gunner sat down on the ground with a grunt.“So we find a better place to crash, and then what?”

  Josh pulled out a map and laid it on the ground. He took a pencil from a pocket on his forearm and drew a circle over a small black square symbol in the top right of the grid. As his team leaders watched on, Josh placed a series of symbols around the black square, designating entryways and egress routes. Finished placing his graphics, the squad leader looked up.

  “What is that?”Dax asked.

  “That,”Josh said,“is Alpha’s fort. Thornton had been monitoring their activity in order to stay out of the way. He never planned to attack, but wanted to know how to take over if they ever left.”He tapped the map.“Sadly, he never found a weakness.”

  Alexa
leaned in closer, her excitement growing. She chewed on her lip.“Last I checked, Alpha’s almost at full strength. And we’re just twelve guns.”

  “When the safeties get here, they’ll release a casualty report.”Dax scratched his head.“By 1700, Alpha’s gonna know we’re the last ones standing.”

  Josh held up a finger.“That’s why we have to move fast. It’s thirty klicks to the base, and not on easy terrain. But if we get there before they post the report tomorrow night, we have the advantage.”He shrugged.“Not a big one, but any advantage can work.”

  Dax laughed.“So we’re planning on winning this, now?”

  Josh pushed the map out of the way and began drawing in the sand.“We’re gonna need every mortar we can carry. Tomorrow, we’re gonna rain hell on those poor bastards.”

  - IX -

  Cameron awoke in Blue Space. Blood covered his right eye, casting the world in shades of purple. Around him, the cockpit vibrated with a steady hum. He looked around, trying to establish some semblance of bearing, but there was nothing to key on to. The Boxti cruiser that had towed him into the void was long gone, having found its exit. He was all alone, somehow still traveling through hyperspace, and without any means of getting out.

  Chapter Four

  The Devil You Know

  “Ask any two people on the street and you’ll get three opinions about the Mars Uprising. Nobody won that war, it simply ended. Both sides finally put down their arms not because they were done killing, but because the homefront was almost completely destroyed. We look back now and think our leaders should have known what would happen, what would come out of the cesspool of hate and ignorance. Jonah wasn’t the first monster we created. But he was the most ambitious.”

  Jerry Ahmad

  Former Chief of Staff

  2233

  - I -

  November 22, 2236

  New York awoke with a roar, spewing traffic into the already congested arteries. The tiered lanes of cars and trucks stacked almost eighty-million people in the tight spaces between the looming skyscrapers. Like all moments preceding a storm, the air seemed charged with electricity.

  Since its founding, the city had changed flags only a few times. The Union Jack gave way to the Star-Spangled Banner, and the American flag rose anew as the Empire Americana. Under the United Earth Council, the Big Apple served as capital to an entire planet, though that distinction eventually moved to Vienna after political fallout from the Korean Kingdom. Not to be deterred, the great city continued to grow in size and prominence, consuming the surrounding lands under one immense urban sprawl. With a population measured in billions, New York City remained the prime example of a megapolis.

  High-tech industry flocked to the Americas, and the towering landscape of Earth’s greatest city grew ever larger. Skyscrapers fell into the shadows and monolithic spires sprouted from the city streets to scrape at the stratosphere. In time, several Space Elevators were tethered in orbit overhead, becoming the tallest manmade structures on humanity’s home planet. With the ground left so far below, travel between buildings required the construction of the Sky Rail, a tram system based from tower to tower.

  Spanning the vertigo-inducing distances between the hundreds of high rises in the downtown area, the Sky Rail carried thousands upon thousands of travelers to and from their places of work and play. On a given day, over twelve million people used the mile-high trains to skip out on the less enjoyable shuttle jumps between towers. New York’s Transit Authority monitored the various stations and the fleet of passenger cars, providing much-needed security. Though the Martian terrorist group Red Hammer had been loathe to attack civilians in the past, recent years had seen the gloves fully removed.

  At the station hanging over the 5th and Broadway intersection, a young man sat on a bench and ate a sandwich from a paper bag. He was average-looking, barely worth a passing glance. A small backpack bearing the NYU slogan lay on the ground by his feet. Everyday passengers paid no attention to the kid, dismissing him as a student and returning their thoughts to more pressing matters. No one noticed the colorful wires that poked out from between the zipper of his bag, or the way he glanced around fitfully as he ate his food.

  Two transit officers walked onto the platform, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. One spoke into his walkie-talkie, his eyes alert as he scanned each face. The other walked around the area, hands resting on his gun belt. He would pause every ten feet or so, rocking on his feet as though bored. To an untrained observer, the cops were going through the motions of their job.

  On his bench, the young man’s phone rang and he immediately grabbed at it, dropping his sandwich onto his lap. He pressed the answer key and held the device to his ear. The nearest officer turned his head slowly, not wanting to seem too interested in the exchange. Without speaking, the policeman glanced over at his partner and tapped the brim of his hat. On the signal, the other officer nodded and moved into a flanking position.

  “No,”the young man said into the phone.“Everything is fine here. I don’t need you to babysit me.”He leaned over, cupping his hand over his mouth.“Don’t you trust me to take care of something as small as this?”

  The two cops closed the distance, and around them passengers began to clear the area. Just the physicality of the police around the man on the bench spoke volumes. With a nod, one of the officers stepped up and stood directly in front of the suspicious kid. He didn’t draw his weapon, as there was no reason to cause alarm just yet. The cop waited for his presence to be noticed.

  The boy looked up, eyes growing wider as he saw the uniform and badge on the man in front. The phone dropped down slowly before resting in his lap.“Officer?”

  A train approached the station, vibrating the entire platform as the engineer applied the brakes. Businessmen and students and blue-collar workers moved closer to the boarding area, leaving just enough space for arriving passengers to disembark. A circle formed around the two police officers and the suspicious kid, growing larger by the minute.

  “Son,”the policeman said.“Would you mind stepping to the side with me?”

  The young man looked at his watch, fretful.“Is there some kind of problem?”

  Leaning down, the officer’s eyes pierced into the boy’s.“Is there going to be?”

  * * * * *

  The tablet in his lap showed a three-dimensional view of the city, complete with the active traffic patterns. On the screen, the massive Galactic Media Tower was highlighted with a red aura. In a ring around the building, marking each Sky Rail platform, were glowing yellow dots. In the bottom of the screen, a timer counted down from three minutes, sounding a chime every sixty seconds.

  “We’re about five from touchdown, sir,”the driver said.

  Sitting in the hot seat, center of the shuttle, Jonah Blightman couldn’t help but smile. He pressed the transmit button on the intercom, checking that his headset was properly connected. He cleared his throat and began.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the Red Hammer, I salute you. After years of preparation, and more than a few false starts, our time has come. Today will mark the opening shot to a war I have planned for more than a decade.”He paused, thinking of all he’d sacrificed to get to this point: his family, his life, his birth name.“A great comeuppance is upon the hapless citizens of Earth, though retribution is intended solely for their leaders. Spare anyone who isn’t an immediate threat, and clear the areas around those blast zones. I don’t want unnecessary deaths to tarnish our debut.”

  Voices cried out in support over the radio in a dozen languages. All around the world, Jonah’s soldiers prepared for war.

  Jonah switched off the radio and settled back in his seat.“Where are the other teams?”he asked, knowing the answer already.

  His second-in-command, Victor Brock, leaned forward from the back of the shuttle. Around him, twenty armed soldiers of the Red Hammer sat ready to deploy. They wore all black jumpsuits with heavy ceramic armor and full helmets.“The Eu
ro-Asia team is on schedule. Antarctica is a go. The only hiccup was Australia. Bombs have been planted at nineteen of twenty locations.”

  Jonah looked up from his tablet.“Only nineteen?”

  “Lin was caught by a security sweep.”Vic held up his own screen, showing his commander the location of their teams around the globe. On the map, small blue dots denoted cells operating under orders, while red dots represented planted bombs and targeted locations.“Our African cells hit all designated targets, and we think we’re getting a bonus in Cairo.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Victor grinned malevolently.“Counsellor Truman’s conducting an inspection of the grounds at the new facility. We can add a dozen staffers and the Secretary of Energy to the list.”He tapped the screen, bringing up the map of the Americas.“Brazil was a problem, but you already talked to Hans. They’ll go to Plan B for that tanker.”

  Jonah nodded.“It’s regrettable. Kills innocent civilians without the benefit of breaking down the infrastructure.”

  “Necessity, sir. We’ll just have to settle for a good show.”

  He glared at Victor.“Don’t be callous about peoples’lives. If our leaders hadn’t acted that way ten years ago, we wouldn’t need to be here now. Remember that.”

  “Yes, sir.”Victor turned away before scowling. He didn’t like being treated like some green recruit, always receiving the history lectures. He’d been there, fighting next to Jonah in the tunnels on Mars. Hell, he was already running a cell before their new leader even joined the ranks.“Sixty seconds to showtime.”

  Jonah pulled a revolver from his holster, admiring the cool metal. He knew the eight-shooter was an anachronism, something from a bygone era. Still, years of close-quarters fighting made him prefer a weapon that would never jam or misfire. He cracked open the chamber, checking the fragmenting rounds inside. Satisfied, he snapped the weapon closed and placed it back inside his coat.