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

The Westie certainly isn’t going anywhere, that’s for sure. The host carrier Admiral Marshall Weston was towed to a higher orbit and evacuated. There was no way to repair the engines, and they decided that such an obsolete vessel wasn’t worth the time to repair, anyway. Weapons and sensitive data were stripped from her, and she was decommissioned. She’ll be living out the rest of her life as the Tharsis, an orbital space station, there to support our mission on Mars and to help the Martians regain spaceflight.

Search and rescue operations went on throughout the first day, finding our people on the surface of Mars and in orbit. There are still a few searches still going; hopefully they will find more. We’ve lost enough.

The Saturnine fleet left the very hour the fighting ended. They’d had enough and went off somewhere else, no doubt to cause trouble. The Venusians left as well, but they stopped first to pick up their survivors on the surface and in orbit.

That left us with Mars, sort of. Deimos is ours, but there’s not really anything left of the Saturnine base. There are plans for building some new facilities there, but I doubt it’ll be as extensive as what was there before. Fixed bases are deathtraps in space. We might rebuild Pavonis Base as well, and we’ve got teams working on the terraforming stations at Olympus Mons to make sure they can finally finish the job of making Mars a livable world.

The Martians aren’t exactly pleased with us. Naturally, they blame us for the pieces of Phobos raining down on the equatorial regions. They aren’t going to blame the Saturnine or the Venusians since they’re gone. There’s also the part where Saturn and Venus’s allied tribes attacked our allied tribes. Now our allies want revenge on those tribes, and they want our help wiping them out. That’s going to be a fun mess to sort out.

Ophir Chasma is completely locked down. Some high-level security teams went down there with Marine support and closed the whole place off. I’m sure there’s been all kinds of attempts to examine and research the wreckage of the huge alien craft, but there’s no way anyone is going to tell me anything about it.

Then there’s the ship that got away.

Everyone searched the area of space where the small alien ship disappeared. Then everyone sent out probes and scouts to search possible areas it might have gone to. Nothing. It’s vanished completely. A fair number of scientists think the ship might have activated some kind of faster-than-light drive. If that’s so, we’ll never catch it.

So, after all that, we’re headed home—but not all of us.

Many aren’t coming home. For those under my command, what do I say? I never got the chance to get to know them as I should have. I’ll find out what I can for the letters. I can certainly say I was proud to fly with them. Not one of them let us down; they gave their all, right up to the end.

“Mad Dog” Jack Martin came out of it all right. I figure he’s too ornery to die. Given his spectacular number of enemy kills, I’m recommending him for the Calisto Star and a promotion. He’s one of the finest Angel pilots I’ve ever seen, though I still have concerns as to whether he’ll mature into a leadership role. Still, we need veterans like Martin, and someone has to help new pilots learn their roles. He’s earned the chance.

“Sparky” Shane Greensport signed up for the engineering degree and got more excitement than any of us bargained for. His Angel Sparrow was crippled in the fighting, and for a while it looked like he was lost. He went extra-vehicular and repaired his frame enough to broadcast an SOS for pickup. He’s in the med-bay recovering from broken bones, hemorrhages, and some radiation burns. Tough kid. I put him in for a citation and a promotion, too. We’re going to need that kind of initiative and adaptability.

“Data” Dashiell Bertrand survived after all. He’s up and talking and walking around, but he still needs assistance from a cybernetic walking exoskeleton. He’ll be undergoing significant recovery therapy back at Jupiter. He’ll probably never fly again.

Commander Clarence Rackham, “The Hammer,” lived up to his legend. He scored a near-record number of enemy kills and reportedly beat a Saturnine assault-battleoid to death with its own ripped off limbs. With guys like him on our side, I figure we have a chance, whatever comes at us.

As for the Guardian-class Angel exo-frames…this was their last flight. Looking forward, they’ll probably be discontinued. These frames have been considered obsolete for a long time. Honestly, we did better than most studies predicted when facing main-line Saturnine forces. They’re still dangerously behind the times, though. I had to say goodbye to Chimera; his service is concluded at last. Most likely I’ll be training to fly one of the newer models soon. We’re going to need all the pilots we can get in the next few years.

It’s clear the war isn’t really over—not yet, anyway. Too much has been lost, with too many dead for everyone to just forget about it and go home.

Saturn revealed hidden plans and techniques for their surprise attack that must have taken decades to develop, and they’re going to want to get something for what they revealed and lost. There are still a lot more Saturnine ships out there than ours, and they’re not ready to quit yet.

Venus might be done with open warfare; they tried it, and it didn’t work out so well for them. Still, they might try using their infamously capable special warfare and intelligence groups to pull something. They’re also a major world that could go either way, so we can’t count them entirely out yet.

Earth and Luna