They Shall Not Pass (The Empire's Corps Book 12) Read online

He shuddered at the thought. For all of its flaws, the Empire had managed to prevent separatists, terrorists and insurgents from using weapons of mass destruction on a regular basis. The bastards had known that the Empire would stop at nothing to hunt them down, if they committed mass murder. But the Empire was gone and who knew if the successor states would uphold the old rules? Some of them might even see advantage in slaughtering entire planetary populations.

  Not us, he told himself, firmly. He’d been far too close to one nuclear blast and he had no intention of being close to another. Even if it costs us the war.

  He cleared his throat for attention. “I believe we have an option,” he said. “It will be chancy, and perhaps quite costly, but it may be the only option we have.”

  The display altered at his command, focusing in on a single green star. He winced inwardly as he heard Jasmine’s sharp intake of breath. She’d been captured and tortured on Corinthian, after all, and such treatment always left scars. He would have left her out of the mission entirely, if that were possible, but he was terrifyingly short of experienced and capable officers. If the devil had come to him and offered an entire regiment of marines, in exchange for his soul, he would have accepted without a second thought.

  “Corinthian,” he said. There would be time to chat with Jasmine privately later, if she had concerns of her own. “Once the home base of Admiral Singh, our old and new enemy; now, a loyal Commonwealth world.”

  “I should have killed her,” Jasmine said, quietly.

  “You couldn't have known what she’d manage to do,” Ed said. Privately, he was more than a little impressed. Admiral Rani Singh’s remaining formation should have rapidly run out of supplies and died, somewhere in the inky darkness of space. Instead, they’d made their way to Wolfbane and taken up high position in the government. “I wouldn't have expected her to be so quick to take Brown’s place.”

  But it might just work in their favour, he told himself. Governor Brown was competent enough, but he’d worked hard to stack the deck in his favour before starting the war. He hadn’t had the drive for power and military conquest that Rani Singh possessed in spades, or the sheer bloody-minded determination to win that characterised many of the marines. Ed had doubted Brown would take the bait, when it was waved under his nose, but Admiral Singh was another story. She’d be looking for weakness in his position and, if she saw a weakness, she’d try to take advantage of it.

  “Over the next two months, we are going to have to consolidate our defence lines around the original Commonwealth stars,” he said, simply. “We simply don’t have the mobile firepower necessary to hold our current positions for much longer. This will place Corinthian outside our defence lines, a temptation to Admiral Singh. I believe, based upon reading her profile, that she will very much want to recover her former base, if only to prove that she cannot be permanently beaten. Right now, we don’t have the firepower to keep her from recapturing the world.”

  Jasmine scowled. “That will be bad for anyone who worked with us, back then.”

  “Yes, it will,” Ed agreed. That was, if anything, an understatement. Admiral Singh was known to be vindictive. “We’ve been evacuating much of the trained personnel to hidden shipyards and manufacturing complexes, but we haven't been able to strip the planet bare, simply because we need to keep those production lines running as long as possible. We cannot keep the world, but we can force her to expend her resources taking it by force.”

  He tapped the console, bringing up a map of the planetary surface. “The principle problem in holding a planet after losing control of the high orbitals is that the enemy can simply bombard the planet into rubble from orbit, well out of range of most planetary defence weapons,” he stated. “The Empire was never keen on allowing planets to deploy weapons that might force the Imperial Navy to keep its distance. Now, however, we have our shield technology. We can project a force field over Freedom City and the surrounding environs, forcing the Wolves to land troops and take the planet from the ground.”

  “It sounds chancy,” Jasmine observed, into the silence. “Can the shield hold?”

  “As long as it has the power, it can hold,” Mandy said, quietly. “But she’d still be able to bombard the remainder of the planet.”

  “She needs to capture Freedom City,” Ed said. “Bombarding the remainder of the planet would be pointless and she'd know it. And if she did, her officers might well mutiny against her.”

  He tapped the map. “The point is that Singh will want to recover her former capital, want it very much,” he added. “If everything goes according to plan, she will land troops herself and fight a conventional land campaign to seize the city. And we’re going to be there to bleed her white. She will concentrate more and more of her resources on Corinthian, trying to dig us out without doing too much damage to the facilities. It should buy us time to get back on our feet and counterattack, trapping her forces against the planet.”

  “And even if she wins, it will cost her dearly,” Gwendolyn observed.

  Gaby frowned. “Will she survive?”

  “I don't know,” Ed said.

  He studied the map for a long moment. In his experience, infantry campaigns tended to be long and drawn out, mainly because their enemies were smart enough not to come to grips with the marines directly. A more organised force would be smashed from orbit, but the force shield would ensure that was no longer a possibility. And if Singh committed herself to a ground campaign, the casualties would be horrific. But would they be enough to weaken her position on Wolfbane?

  The Empire rarely cared about casualties, if the media wasn't involved, he thought. But Wolfbane doesn't even begin to have the same level of resources.

  “It wouldn't be an easy campaign,” Jasmine said, slowly. “It’ll make Lakshmibai look easy - and we know she has data on that campaign.”

  “She’s a naval officer,” Ed said. “To her, eighty kilometres might as well be eight.”

  He smiled, remembering Admiral Valentine’s insistence that the marines - and soldiers - could march over three hundred miles in a day. A distance that was tiny on an interplanetary scale, a distance that a starship could cover in less than a second, was immense on a planetary surface. Even without hostile forces doing their level best to stop the march, it would have taken days to complete it. And, on Corinthian, his forces were going to be very hostile indeed.

  And there’s no such thing as terrain in space, he thought, dryly. Skimming through an asteroid field or punching it out with an enemy ship in a nebula only happened in bad entertainment flicks. She isn't going to grasp how hard it can be to push through a mountain pass, even without the enemy making life interesting.

  “It is definitely not going to be easy,” he warned. “Quite apart from the CEF, we’ll be turning Corinthian into a battleground. The civilians will be evacuated, of course, but large parts of the region will be devastated.”

  “The planetary government will not take that well,” Gaby warned.

  “The planetary government isn't going to survive if Admiral Singh returns,” Jasmine said, bluntly. “I think the leadership were all part of our little coup, weren't they?”

  “Yes,” Ed said. “They were all involved in the coup and purging her supporters from the planet, afterwards. They even renamed their capital Freedom City.”

  “She’s not going to shower them with love,” Jasmine said. “We may want to start thinking about evacuating them.”

  Ed shrugged. It was something to bear in mind, although he wasn't particularly keen on evacuating a government if the entire planet couldn't be abandoned. Far too many of the brushfires he’d had to deal with before their exile had been caused by planetary leaders who’d fled, the moment they realised they’d gone too far, leaving their people to deal with the consequences. He couldn't recall any governor who’d actually faced the consequences himself.

  “We will consult with the government, of course,” he said. “But the operation will need to begin as soon as
possible.”

  Mandy leaned forward. “Colonel,” she said, “how do you intend to lure Singh into the trap?”

  Ed exchanged a glance with Kitty Stevenson. Only a handful of people knew about Hannalore Roeder and he wanted to keep it that way, even though he trusted everyone in the compartment implicitly. And yet, it was a good question. Admiral Singh might miss the preparations entirely, if there wasn’t a direct link between Avalon and Wolfbane ...

  “Wolfbane has a number of intelligence-gathering rings operating on Avalon,” he said, finally. “We believe they are all under our control. They’ll be told that we will be pulling back from the defence lines, which is true, and that we will be stripping Corinthian of everything vital before we go. That’s the message that will reach Admiral Singh.”

  “Unless there’s a spy ring we don’t know about,” Jasmine said.

  “True,” Ed agreed. “But we will be spreading the story fairly widely. No one outside this room will know the truth until it’s too late.”

  He smiled. “Officially, the CEF and a number of starships will be looting Corinthian,” he added. “Admiral Singh will expect as much, of course. It will give her a strong incentive to move quickly. Unofficially, we will be digging in, preparing to resist her offensive when it comes.”

  Jasmine frowned. “We?”

  “I’ll be taking personal command of the operation,” Ed said, firmly. “It was my idea.”

  He kept his face impassive. Jasmine might have expected it for herself, despite her doubts over her fitness for command, but the whole operation was his idea. He’d already sent far too many officers and men into combat without being there himself. And how many officers on Earth had agreed to ill-planned deployments and crazy tactical plans because they weren't the ones charged with making them real? The day he stopped being willing to take the field, to turn his plans into reality, was the day he should resign.

  “I don’t promise the plan will work,” he concluded. “But I think it’s the best chance we have to catch her with her pants down.”

  “It looks workable,” Gaby said. “Is it?”

  “If Admiral Singh takes the bait,” Jasmine said. “A lot depends on her even noticing the bait being waved in front of her.”

  “We can take care of that,” Kitty said. “And we can make sure that rumours spread, just to confuse any spies we don’t know about.”

  “It may cause political problems,” Gaby said. “If the other worlds get the impression that we’re planning to loot Corinthian ...”

  Ed scowled. “Can you keep it under control?”

  “Maybe,” Gaby said. “But we will have to pay a price for it later.”

  “We will,” Ed agreed. He tapped the table, thoughtfully. “We now move to the tactical planning for the operation ...”

  Chapter Three

  Writers find this perplexing, of course. This is why most mystery stories tend to be very clear, with every last detail accounted for. The real world is a great deal more messy.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Role of Randomness In War.

  Jasmine kept her private thoughts to herself as the small planning team hashed out the tactical details of the operation, although she offered her thoughts and opinions based on her experience on Corinthian and Lakshmibai. She was, she suspected, the sole officer for a hundred light years who had commanded a fast-moving force trying to break through enemy defences, certainly the only one in the Commonwealth. But the warrior caste on Lakshmibai hadn't been anything like a competent enemy ...

  She pushed the thought aside as the meeting came to an end. The plan was a little vague, compared to the thousand-page outlines she’d seen before their exile to Avalon, but there was no way every possible variation could be planned for in advance. War was a democracy in the truest possible sense; the enemy got a vote. It was far better for the commander on the spot to have authority to react to the situation as it changed, rather than have to send for new orders from Avalon. The Empire had lost a dozen minor campaigns because the CO didn't have the authority to wipe his ass without orders from Earth, in triplicate.

  “Jasmine,” Colonel Stalker said. “Please remain behind.”

  Jasmine nodded and remained seated, feeling torn between anticipation and an odd kind of fear. Was she ready to go back into the field? Or was she about to be told that she was being permanently relegated to REMF status? Someone would have to remain on Avalon, after all, if Colonel Stalker was going to Corinthian. Normally, she wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting the post, but nothing had been normal for the past seven years. Her career path was a crooked mess.

  “Jasmine,” Stalker said. He sat, facing her. “How was your leave?”

  “It was cold, sir,” Jasmine said. She had always liked and respected the colonel, but they’d hardly been friends. He’d been her first commanding officer, after her graduation; there’d always been a distance between them. “But I managed to do plenty of climbing.”

  “I keep meaning to go climbing myself,” Stalker mused. “Would you recommend it?”

  “We could train mountain troops up there,” Jasmine said. Marines were meant to be well-rounded, but some of the mountaineering troops she’d encountered on Han had been strikingly good, as long as they were in their element. “But I wouldn't climb some of the nastier mountains without another marine by my side.”

  “It would probably be wise,” Stalker agreed. He leaned back in his chair, a movement that didn't put Jasmine at her ease. “What do you think of the operational plan?”

  Jasmine took a moment to gather her thoughts. “It hinges on the assumption that Admiral Singh will fall for our trap,” she said, finally. “The odds are in our favour, but she may have different ideas. Corinthian is simply less important than Wolfbane.”

  “Her profile makes it clear that she hates to lose,” Stalker said. “Would you agree with that?”

  “I hate to lose, sir,” Jasmine said. “But I’m not sure I would walk deliberately into an elephant trap because of my wounded pride.”

  She rubbed her shaved head, thoughtfully. “It will look simple to her from orbit, I suspect,” she added. “But it really is a gamble.”

  “Life is a gamble,” Stalker said. “Right now, the alternative is to dig in and fight to the last or find a way to strike at Wolfbane directly. And that isn't going to be easy.”

  Jasmine nodded, shortly. The Wolves could muster the forces necessary to stop any deep-strike offensive, while launching an all-out attack on Avalon themselves. Trying to punch out Wolfbane might just cost the Commonwealth everything, yet hunkering down and hoping for the best wasn't a strategy either. Luring Admiral Singh into a minefield was the best of a set of bad options. She didn't like it, but she couldn't think of anything better.

  “It should be workable, sir,” she said. “If worst comes to worst, the CEF can go to ground and scatter until the navy recovers control of the system.”

  “That’s one of the possible options,” Stalker said.

  “There's another concern,” Jasmine added. “Is Admiral Singh going to be ready to launch a ground invasion? It isn't as though they’re expecting to have to fight on the ground.”

  “Corinthian has been distributing weapons ever since the liberation,” Stalker said. “They’ll know that everyone and his wife is armed to the teeth, which will give them some incentive to bring a larger force. But you’re right. They may have to delay matters long enough to summon additional forces from their nearby bases.”

  Jasmine nodded, slowly. The Imperial Navy had plenty of experience in landing occupation forces and then supporting them, but they had never considered a long conventional campaign without orbital supremacy. They’d simply never faced a peer power since the Unification Wars, so long ago that they’d passed well out of living memory. And now so much had to be relearned. It was frustrating, even though she suspected Admiral Singh had the same problem.

  She looked up. “Is there anything we can do about that?”

 
“Probably not,” Stalker admitted. “We’re rolling the dice here, Jasmine, and the odds are pretty much stacked against us.”

  “I thought that was how we rolled, sir,” Jasmine said. She couldn't help feeling a twinge of ... concern. She’d never realised just how much commanding officers sweated bullets for the safety of their men until she’d become a commanding officer herself. “We can do anything, if we put our minds to it.”

  Stalker smiled. “I’m glad to hear you say that,” he said. “What do you think of yourself, right now?”

  “The job needs to be done, sir,” Jasmine said, ducking the question. Two years at the Slaughterhouse and eight years on duty had taught her that whining and moaning helped no one, particularly not herself. “If you have a role for me in this operation, I will be happy to take it.”

  Stalker nodded. “I can't give you the CEF,” he said, flatly. “The original formation has been almost completely rebuilt, with new officers in important positions. General Crichton Mathis currently holds command; he’ll be my second on Corinthian.”