Iron & Blood: Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy Read online

  Iron & Blood

  Book Two of The Expansion Wars Trilogy

  Joshua Dalzele

  Contents

  Title

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Also by Joshua Dalzele

  Afterword

  Iron & Blood

  Book Two of the Expansion Wars Trilogy

  Joshua Dalzelle

  ©2017

  Digital Edition

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  http://www.moniquehappy.com

  “The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”

  -Otto von Bismarck

  1

  Planet Juwel

  Juwel System, United Terran Federation

  “Keep your damn heads down! They’re still shooting over the ridge, there’s nothing to see!”

  Another series of explosions shook the ground and made Emil hug the dirt and scrunch his eyes shut so tightly he was seeing spots. The twenty-year-old had never felt fear like this at any other point in his life, so scared that he felt no shame for the whimpers that escaped his lips and the uncontrollable trembling. He squeezed the infantry carbine as if it was a life preserver and he was a drowning man.

  “Emil! Get your fucking eyes open!” Finn Auer shouted, waving his three-fingered hand at him. “Keep tucked down but be alert! We only have to keep them from overrunning us into the town … the Marines will be here soon!”

  Emil had heard that before and knew there weren’t enough Marines to go around. The old man was likely mouthing platitudes to keep his young charges from completely succumbing to fear, and Emil despised him for it all the more. Since the Darshik invasion three major cities had fallen; the armored troopers the aliens had landed made short work of the civil defense forces that were more in place for law enforcement and emergencies than for any real fighting. CENTCOM had managed to get two drop carriers through the Darshik blockade and land two full regiments on the southern point totaling seven thousand combat capable Marines. Unfortunately the support ship that would have brought their equipment was destroyed at the jump point, and almost all of their mobility, artillery, and supplies were lost before they could even make it into orbit. That left a lot of Marines with no way to get to where they were needed and most only had light infantry weapons. It was a disaster from the beginning.

  Emil had been a child when the Phage had ripped through the Frontier worlds. He remembered his parents talking about it as if it were nothing more than an intellectual curiosity. After all, it was so far away … not even New European Commonwealth worlds. They were safe on Juwel. While the adults dismissed it as an interesting, if abstract topic, he remembered the older kids at school whispering about it; the Phage were coming to wipe out all of humanity and no Terran world would be spared. The visceral terror he’d felt as a child was still vivid in his mind.

  That fear was nothing like he felt now, however. The Darshik troops would land outside of major settlements, congregate for a time as they silently organized and deployed their force while only taking action to fend off any meager defense put up by the humans, and then march into the city to subdue it quickly and efficiently. They were nothing short of terrifying. Ensconced in their matte-black combat environmental suits, the only thing that could be gleaned of their appearance was that they were bipedal on short legs with long arm-like appendages and a head that was more squat and ovoid than a human’s. Any of the aliens the human militia managed to kill were quickly cleared from the field by their comrades, so as far as Emil knew nobody on Juwel had ever seen a Darshik without the protective suit.

  “Here they come!” someone shouted from down the line.

  “Brace yourselves!” Finn called. “Don’t let them get past this position!”

  Emil risked a look up over the hasty fortifications they’d built and saw that the Darshik troops were now sprinting across the open field. They made no sound other than the pounding of their feet, creating an eerie spectacle. While the troopers were bad enough on their own, at least the fact they’d begun their charge meant that the bombardment from their ground-based artillery had ended. That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that their position was first in line and really only intended to slow down the advance so that the rest of the settlement’s defense force could muster and get into position. In other words: They were a speedbump. From what he’d learned he knew that the Darshik would not simply bypass even such a small defensive position but would instead stop and eliminate them to the last man.

  “Oh, God,” Emil whispered, petitioning the God of his youth to give him courage. He’d already resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to survive this assault by an enemy he’d given no offense to.

  The heavy machine gun that was on the opposite side of the line from Emil opened up, the single-barrel, chemically fired weapon spitting out 25mm shells at a rate of fifteen hundred rounds per minute. It was an antiquated anti-vehicle gun, but it still packed a hell of a punch. More importantly, it was all they had. The crew was firing in long, sustained bursts that would quickly destroy the barrel. Emil knew that they must have reached the same conclusion he had regarding their odds of survival and were hell-bent on doing as much damage to the enemy prior to the inevitable.

  A new sound reached him, the spiteful buzz of the Darshik infantry weapons opening up on their position. Their handheld weaponry drew power from their combat suits via an umbilical and fired some type of concentrated plasma burst that acted like an incendiary projectile. From previous engagements the defenders of Juwel had learned that the weapons were devastating, but severely range-limited. They also weren’t especially effective against even a moderately armored vehicle, creating a lot of light and noise but the charge dissipating before it could cause significant damage. The Darshik troops relied on the pinpoint accuracy of their field artillery and orbital bombardments to soften up Terran positions before they swarmed in to clean up anybody still left fighting. So far they had ignored any civilians not taking up arms.

  “Right side! Fire your fucking weapons!” the shout came from somewhere down the line. He couldn’t recognize the voice but knew it wasn’t Finn. Emil sucked in a breath, steeled his nerves, and rose up over their hastily erected earthworks, sighting down his weapon. The leading elements of the Darshik force were stretched out and concentrating on where the heavy gun was still hammering their formation. A dozen dead aliens littered the field and the rest were crouched down, using the slope of the terrain to keep out of the
gun’s line of fire. They were stacked almost single file and completely exposed to trailing positions occupied by Emil and three other defenders.

  “They’re out of range, Emil!” the middle-aged man he shared the ditch with hissed. “You’ll expose us!”

  “You really think they don’t know we’re here?” Emil asked, the man’s cowardice making him all the more disgusted with himself for his own hesitation. He saw that they were largely being ignored as the rear elements of the enemy were moving further away to try and flank around the large-bore projectile weapon that had momentarily fell silent while its crew hastily swapped the ruined barrel out for one of the two spares they had left.

  Emil sighted through the optics of his rifle, an infantry weapon that was already outdated when it was built some eighty years prior. The ranging data showed that the Darshik troops hunkered down were just outside the effective range of the gas-powered 5mm rifle. The scope reticle would blink red whenever he sighted on the enemy, telling him there was no valid shot available.

  “Scheisse!” Emil cursed in the tongue of his ancestors. He wasn’t a soldier or even much of a fighter. But he was a hunter and a master marksman with weapons not nearly as powerful or accurate as the one he currently held. He ignored the prompts and warnings in his scope as the computer insisted he didn’t have a shot. Observing the wave of the grass he saw he had two distinct crosswinds and estimated he’d have to put his point of aim at least a half a meter over his target to get the proper elevation.

  He squeezed the trigger and barely noticed the pop into his shoulder as the weapon fired, the report being completely lost in the cacophony of the skirmish. Through this scope he could see the ground near one of the enemy troops kick up as his round hit a few meters short. Without a moment’s hesitation he held his point of aim just a bit higher, relying completely on instinct even though the weapon was unfamiliar, and quickly squeezed off another round.

  Emil watched, fascinated, as the second to last Darshik jerked and then slowly toppled over, a stream of vapor spitting from a hole in the neck of its environmental suit. The soldier fell and did not move so Emil assumed that he’d hit something vital. The elation of striking back broke through the wall of terror, the only emotion he’d felt since they heard the Darshik were on the move towards their settlement, and he got down to business.

  The next target he picked was just behind the lead Darshik and appeared to be setting up some sort of portable standoff weapon or artillery. He applied the doping he’d learned from his last shot and squeezed the trigger, watching as the 5mm round tore the crown off the top of the enemy’s helmet. After the same release of gas the Darshik fell to the ground, flopping like a fish out of water. The other troops seemed to be confused as to where they were taking fire from, their squat heads rotating about. Emil gritted his teeth against the adrenaline dump and began picking off targets at random. Time to make these fickers pay.

  Sergeant Willard “Willy” Barton forced himself to remain calm as the truck bounced across the recently harvested field. The vehicle was a surprisingly capable eight-wheeled flatbed used in agriculture and its electric drive had more than enough power to haul him and his men across the flat Juwel plains. What was causing Barton so much consternation was the fact the vehicle was built for load capacity and torque, not speed. Even with the shortcut their local driver was taking they were covering the distance at an interminable crawl. The high-pitched whine of a turbine starting broke him out of his ruminations and he looked questioningly at the driver.

  “Batteries were down to thirty percent,” she said apologetically. “It’s not good for them to get much lower than that or you start to get bad cells.” Barton just nodded. They were out in the middle of nowhere still so he wasn’t overly concerned about the extra noise the vehicle’s tiny gas turbine generator would make as it replenished the batteries. As a rugged farm vehicle at least it had its own generator, unlike its smaller, city-dwelling counterparts that needed to be hooked to a charge station. The driver, who had only introduced herself as Josie, had shown them a direct route to a medium-sized agricultural town called Westfall where the Darshik had been sending scout parties to begin softening up the militia emplacements before the main wave hit. Josie’s route bypassed all the main roads and utilized cross-country travel and some unpaved, unmaintained dirt access roads.

  Sergeant Barton’s platoon had made landfall along with the rest of the two-regiment-strong force meant to repel the Darshik incursion onto a Terran world, but nearly all of their gear had been destroyed by the enemy blockade before it could be dropped to the surface. The result was a lot of Marines with no practical way to get to where they were needed and without the support equipment to fight for any real duration once they got there. Command had ordered four platoons from 5th Expeditionary Battalion to use whatever means necessary to make contact with the enemy, ascertain strength, harass when possible, and report back. The problem was compounded when the Darshik destroyed every satellite over Juwel, effectively blinding the stranded ground forces. Not even so much as a weather satellite was left in orbit.

  Barton’s platoon was pared down further as the lieutenant decided having everyone bunched up with limited coms and nonexistent real-time intel on enemy movements was tantamount to suicide. He ordered 2nd Platoon to perform their recon role and to not engage any superior forces unless absolutely necessary. While Barton normally had a less than flattering opinion of the LT’s decision-making ability, he grudgingly had to concede that the fresh-faced young man was doing the right thing by not ordering his men into a buzzsaw in the face of no defined objective or coherent strategy to get the Darshik off of Juwel. All he knew for sure was that if the Fleet assholes didn’t clear the skies this would be the shortest counteroffensive of all time. The Darshik might play hide and seek with a numerically unknown force for a while, but Barton knew that if the Marines became too much of a nuisance they could expect to be annihilated via orbital bombardment.

  “Sergeant Barton,” a skinny private first class called through the open back window. “We’re close enough for the drone.”

  “Send it,” Barton said over his shoulder. “Pipe the feed over the squad channel.”

  “Sure thing—fuck!” the PFC shouted, hitting the back of his head on the window frame as he pulled himself back through. The boy’s name was Wilson … something Wilson, Barton had never gotten his first name. He was the stand-in tech operator for his squad and would control one of their two lightweight recon drones. The small unmanned craft were just under a meter in length and were powered by counter-rotating ducted fans, one on each of the stubby wings. In addition to being able to achieve an admirable forward flight speed as well as hover and loiter, they had nearly a twenty-kilometer signal range without the aid of an orbital repeater and an effective flight time of one hundred and twenty minutes. His people bitched about packing them along, but they came in handy when you wanted to see something over the next hill.

  Barton heard the buzzing whine of the powerful little motors spin up even over the turbine of the truck and looked over his shoulder in time to see someone help Wilson ease the drone into the air. It followed along after the ground vehicle for a bit like a puppy before the mission parameters fully loaded and it zipped up and away along their direction of travel. He looked down at the semi-flexible, organic touch panel that was part of his battle uniform top and saw an icon for “Buzzard 1” pop up. When he pressed it the screen flashed to a live feed from the camera turret located under the nose of their drone. It didn’t take long for the craft to get high enough to see there was a small skirmish kicking up along one of the border towns outside of Westfall.

  “Wilson! I want to zoom in on that tussle up ahead of us!”

  “On it, Sarge!” Wilson called back, manipulating the controls.

  The video zoomed in and stabilized on what looked like two columns of Darshik ground troops engaging a haphazard defensive position that was dug in at the natural chokepoint the rolling hills p
rovided. Barton shook his head as he watched farmers and industrial workers fire blindly into the hills and, in some cases, fire into the ground a few meters ahead of them as they tried to simultaneously remain fully behind cover and return fire to the enemy. He had to remind himself that these were militia members many, many generations away from any real fighting. Hell … his own men were largely untested in battle so his disgust might be a bit premature. Just as he was getting ready to write the small engagement off as a total loss for the Terrans he saw Darshik troops in the leading column begin to drop.

  He frowned as he couldn’t make out why the enemy seemed to be dropping dead in the lead element as they weren’t exposed to the militia’s lone machine gun. It took two more dead Darshik for him to realize that someone was letting them have it from the far, perpendicular rise and from what he could see it was well beyond the effective range of the standard 5mm infantry carbines the militia was equipped with. He wasn’t the only one who noticed the impressive shooting.

  “Whoo! Some civvy is fucking them up! Get some!” someone shouted from the bed of the truck. “Hey, Sarge! We better haul ass or that kid’s not going to leave any aliens for us!” Barton was torn between telling the unknown enthusiast to shut the hell up or to be in full agreement with him. The sharpshooter was sure to be sussed out soon enough and he still had a full element of Darshik that were hanging back to deal with. Despite the LT’s orders, he had a chance to engage with relatively little risk and secure one of the major roads heading into Westfall.

  “Listen up!” he bellowed, causing his driver to almost jump out of her skin. “We’re going in hot! We’ll stop the truck short of the last treeline and then we jump that trailing element along its left flank and drive the leading element into the militia’s machine gun if we’re lucky. You ready to kick some alien ass?” The shouts from the back of the truck were tinged with a sort of panic that concerned Barton greatly. He hoped it was just pre-battle jitters but it wasn’t like he had any experience himself with such things. This would be the first time any of them had ever had shots fired in anger aimed their way.