Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

and jamming, we can’t see a thing in our target area. Sure, I’ve got a map overlay of the whole site from before the battle, showing the fortifications and redoubts rising one over the other like an ancient star fortress, but I can’t tell what’s still there and what isn’t until it tries to fire at us. Every enemy missile or beam is answered by a hail of our own in return, but there’s still way too much enemy fire coming up.

Energy beams and railguns fire blindly at us, while flights of missiles race up out of the smoke below, trying to get through our network of anti-missile lasers firing ceaselessly from our Guardians and drones. I call in counter-battery fire from our cruisers overhead, and our beams lance downward through the smoke and raise new columns of fire from below.

I signal that our squadron is beginning our attack, and the fire from space ceases as we move into position. We break into four ad hoc flights to hit the defenses on each side of the base of the tower and begin our descent.

Enemy fire has thinned a lot, but there are still occasional rail darts, x-ray beams, or missiles coming up to us. I give the signal for us to fire our twelve plasma cluster missiles. Streaks of blue light flash toward the defenses below. They fire sporadic railgun shots to try to hit them before they impact. Brilliant flashes actually shine through the smoke and dust below, then enlarge into balls of fire that roll upward as they turn into even more smoke.

We’re passing the flat roof of the tower. One of our squadrons is already engaged with the enemy there. Smoke pours from numerous fires into the thin, cold air. The ruins of Terran weapons emplacements and vehicles lay scattered across the broad rooftop. A Terran Striker aircraft tries to take off, gets stitched through with railgun fire from the Guardians, and plunges, flaming, over the side and out of sight. Our Guardians land and engage the handful of remaining Terran troopers, then I lose sight of it all as I drop below the roof.

Our flight falls along the high composite walls. A small vehicle emerges from a side entrance and fires at us. Our flight burns it down as one, and we plummet past the flaming wreckage. A few missiles or beams still shoot up from the thick smoke below. Our defensive laser clusters burn them down, and we return fire with our railguns and x-ray lances. Another shot comes at us from the township ringing the side, misses, and scores the side of their own tower. A bolt from above immediately answers the enemy fire before we can.

We all release a swarm of SPGs with cluster warheads just before we reach the smoke clouds. The grenades accelerate ahead of us and disappear into the black wall of smoke. An instant later, brief flashes of light are visible through the pall, and echoing thunder rumbles up to us.

The smoke below reaches up and envelops us in a cloud of swirling high temperature fumes. Now, concealed by the smoke, I hit my braking thrusters and press down in my frame as Chimera slows abruptly. I get to about where my designated landing spot should be, but short-range microwave scanners indicate the ground there is now a yawning crater. I shift to the side until I find solid ground to land.

All around me is thick, billowing smoke and impenetrable chaos jamming. The smoke and heat make visual and IR useless, while all my chemical sensors can tell me is that no one could survive out in these fumes. Radio jamming is everywhere, and there’s sonic screamers lighting off, too, making it nearly impossible to tell what’s going on. Microwave scanning is limited to dozens of meters in all this. The flashes and roars of explosions are about the only thing that can penetrate the murk and chaos.

This…was not exactly the plan. We’re down here to secure the area and hold it, but we’re effectively blind. We’re also out of communications with each other due to the jamming and general conditions. Still, we’re trained to operate alone and blinded, so we’ll do our best.

First things first. I’ve got to clear out this jamming to see what’s going on, link up with my flight, and eliminate the enemy. I fire off a cluster of SPGs in anti-radiation mode, and they streak off into the darkness, looking for enemy jamming signals. Even though it’s called “anti-radiation mode,” they like sonar jamming just as much, and should home in on that, too. An instant later I hear another set of rapid explosions, and the enemy jamming decreases noticeably. Radar and sonar become somewhat useful again, and I can make out the locations of the rest of my flight down here in the ruins.

Laser communications are useless in this smoke, but tight-beam microwave is working well enough at short range to talk now. I message into the areas where the others of my flight should have landed. “OK, we can’t see to shoot out of this stuff, but no one else can see us to shoot in, either. With all the wreckage around us, we’ve got great cover to operate in, and for the Marines when they land. The other flights will deal with suppressing fire from outside, anyway. All we need to do is eliminate any remaining hostiles and hold this territory.”

The territory in question is a complete mess. The once orderly fortifications rising in steps to provide interlocking fields of fire are now a ruined no-man’s land of tumbled blocks, craters, and rubble. Seeing it all in microwave and radar, it looks like a set of gray tumbled rocks and random flat areas, all lit up from my perspective like I’ve got a light in the darkness. Occasionally, one of the faces flashes, and strange background scatter disburses and