Alicia nodded. The Theocratic tanks weren’t heavily armored—they’d found that out during the war—but the defenders didn’t have many antitank weapons. It was sheer luck they had any. The POW camp wasn’t meant to be heavily defended. The guards had been more concerned about prisoners breaking out than defending the camp against an outside enemy. Most of them would probably have looked the other way if a lynch mob had arrived to slaughter the prisoners.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the enemy soldiers, using the tanks for cover as they advanced with the squeamish determination of untried men. Whoever was in command over there had a working brain, she decided. That wasn’t good news. The Theocrats had often turned victories into defeats through overplaying their hands, or launching human wave attacks, but this CO seemed to be smart enough to avoid heavy losses. But then the Theocrats had presumably lost a once-infinite source of manpower. They had to conserve their forces or risk losing everything.
“Fire,” Lewis snapped.
Two antitank rockets flared towards their targets, punching through the thin armor and detonating inside the tanks. Alicia felt no sympathy for the tankers, cooked before they had a chance to realize they were under attack; instead, she aimed at the nearest enemy soldier and shot him down. The other enemy troops dropped to the ground, but kept advancing forward with grim resolution. Clearly, the Theocracy hadn’t learned too many lessons from the war. They would have been better advised to fall back and call in an airstrike.
She cursed as a volley of machine-gun fire cracked over her head. A third tank had come into view, firing with gay abandon towards the trenches. Alicia ducked as low as she could, swearing out loud as she saw the bullets digging into the ground and tearing the trench into a muddy nightmare. She saw a man stand up to hurl a grenade, only to be disintegrated by the enemy machine guns. Sweat ran down her back as she tried to spot a target without exposing herself. It was only a matter of time. The defense wasn’t strong enough to stand up to a sustained assault. They had no time to dig proper trenches, establish pillboxes, or do anything that might do something more than slow the enemy down for a few moments.
“Fall back,” Lewis shouted. “Fall . . .”
Alicia saw him fall, half of his head missing. She swallowed, hard, as she crawled back towards the camp. Lewis had led a charmed life, until now. He’d never even been scratched by enemy fire . . . now he was dead. She found a vantage point and fired a handful of shots towards the advancing troops, seeing two of them fall before the remainder ducked for cover and returned fire. There was no hope of getting out alive. Perhaps they should have abandoned the POW camp as soon as the enemy starships had entered orbit. Or killed the prisoners. She didn’t want to think about what they’d do to the local population.
The tank kept inching forward, crushing the remainder of the trenches beneath its treads. Alicia reached for a grenade, took careful aim, and hurled it towards the tank, trying to get it underneath the vehicle before it exploded. The resistance had learned, the hard way, that the tanks weren’t as solidly protected underneath. A minefield would probably have stopped the invasion force in its tracks.
Until they started using prisoners to clear the minefield, she thought as the grenade exploded. The tank shuddered to a halt. I think . . .
Something struck her, hard. She was on her back, her thoughts blurring in and out of existence, before she quite knew what had hit her. Someone had shot her. And she could hear someone running towards her. She tried to reach for her other grenade, but her fingers felt as if they were no longer listening to her. A man was looking down at her, a gun pointed directly at her face . . .
It barked, once. Silence fell.
“The camps have been liberated, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “We’re sorting out the prisoners now.”
Admiral Zaskar barely looked away from the display. “Casualties?”
“Forty-seven men dead in total, along with five tanks,” the tactical officer said after a moment. “Nineteen others injured.”
“Have the wounded men returned to the shuttles,” Admiral Zaskar ordered. They could no longer afford to spend men like water. Besides, being seen to care for his men would do wonders for morale. He could no longer hammer men for dissent either. “And execute any surviving enemy personnel.”
“Aye, sir.”
There was a pause. “I’m picking up a radio transmitter, five miles from the capital,” another officer said. “Should I send them a bomb?”
“Yes,” Admiral Zaskar said. The enemy needed radios to coordinate military operations, now that their ground-based telecommunications system had been destroyed. He had no intention of allowing them to muster resistance. It didn’t look as though there was anything they could do that would pose a threat to his ships, but he didn’t want to discover that he was wrong the hard way. “Take them out.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying the display. They’d rained death on the planet, hitting every military and governmental facility . . . and then striking everything that even looked as though it might help the planet rebuild. Hundreds of thousands of unbelievers would have died already, he was sure, and hundreds of thousands more would die in the next few weeks and months. Judd simply didn’t have the food to feed its population, nor the vehicles or transport network it needed to move what food it did have from the warehouses to where it was needed. The Commonwealth could fill the gap, if the infidels were prepared to make a major commitment, but they would have too many other things to worry about. He’d see to that personally.
As long as we withdraw without being caught by enemy ships, he thought. It had been nearly two hours since
