Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) Read online

  Sigma

  War for New Terra ✪ Book 1

  T.W.M. Ashford

  Contents

  Dark Star Panorama

  The UEC

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

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  About the Author

  Books By T.W.M. Ashford

  Copyright © 2021 by T.W.M. Ashford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Tom Ashford

  Dark Star Panorama

  The Dark Star Panorama is the shared universe of sci-fi stories in which War for New Terra takes place.

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  Sigma

  The UEC

  THE UNITED EARTH COLLECTIVE

  Prior to the evacuation of Earth, the world’s governments formed United Earth Collective. Its priority was the building of great Ark ships to ensure humanity’s continued survival elsewhere in the cosmos. For those unable to get a ticket aboard one of the Arks, only two options remained: enlist as a marine, or be left behind on Earth to die.

  The UEC’s military force is a smelting pot of different nations, cultures and rules. Professionalism and resources are low. Few of its marines have any real combat experience beyond riot control. Many will come to wish they never signed up at all.

  Companies are loosely divided into squads and fireteams as seen fit by Command.

  This is the story of Fireteam Sigma.

  Part One

  New Terra, New Terror

  ✪

  Chapter One

  Sergeant Elizabeth Rogers swung her legs off her bunk and groped blindly for the data pad on her dresser. It was barking out an oh-six-hundred alarm. She slapped it until it shut up.

  Before she could so much as rub the sleep dust from her eyes, there came a loud and abrupt knocking at her bunk room door.

  “Yo, Ginger.” The female voice belonged to Private Flores, more commonly known as Ghost amongst the squad. “You up yet? Baker expects us down for briefing in twenty.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m awake.” She waved at the closed door. “Go on ahead – I’ll catch up.”

  Her instruction was met with indifferent silence. Good. Ginger buried her head in her hands and groaned. She wanted to believe that her grogginess was because she’d yet to acclimatise to the UECS Invincible’s artificial atmosphere, but that was a load of crap. It was the old whiskey the squad had passed around last night. She could still smell it on her breath.

  Well, it didn’t do to turn up at a briefing looking – or smelling – worse for wear. Especially when you were the new fireteam leader and all. She got up and noticed that the bunk above hers was already made.

  “Jesus Christ, Flores. You really are a ghost.”

  She grabbed her combat fatigues from her locker and headed for the showers.

  The briefing room was on the deck directly below the bunk rooms. Ginger arrived with her hair still wet from her shower and the upper half of her fatigues tied around her waist. She wore a white vest top beneath. Her watch read 06:19. Just in time. She punched the button beside the doors to open them.

  Almost everybody else was already inside. It wasn’t hard to tell. A dozen fold-out chairs were laid out in front of a large display screen set into the back wall, and only two of them were empty. Flores had saved one for Ginger next to Duke and herself.

  She hurried over and took her seat.

  “How nice of you to join us,” said Flores, smirking. “Duke didn’t reckon you’d make it. Maybe he was right. You still look a little queasy…”

  “How in God’s name are you so chipper this morning? You drank twice as much as I did.” She slicked her undercut hair back so it didn’t hang in her face and tried to make herself look a little more presentable. “And thanks, Duke. Your confidence in me is making me all teary-eyed.”

  Duke, who officially went by Private Sampson, was a giant of a man. Unlike Ghost, who specialised in long-range marksmanship, Duke preferred to get up close and personal – shotguns and explosives. He responded to Ginger with a big, toothy smile.

  “Practise.” He gave her a hearty slap on the back, and she felt her stomach heave. “Makes perfect, right? Maybe if you spent more time drinking and less time writing in that journal of yours, you’d be able to keep up.”

  Ginger rolled her eyes and pointed at the other empty seat in front of them.

  “Where’s the new guy?”

  Ghost and Duke shrugged in unison.

  “Maybe he isn’t on board yet,” said Ghost. “He’s being transferred over from the Constellation, apparently.”

  “This close to deployment?” Ginger raised a hungover eyebrow. “Cutting it a bit fine.”

  The door to the briefing room hissed open and everyone stiffened. When they saw that it was just Staff Sergeant Baker, they relaxed again. Baker outranked everyone else in the room but, despite his slightly cantankerous disposition, meetings with him tended to fall more on the relaxed side. He didn’t like the three fireteams in his squad standing to attention any more than they did.

  “Yes, stay seated,” said Baker, coming to a stop beside the display screen. He brandished a data pad at them. “You’ll want to be sitting down when you see what you’re going up against.”

  He swiped at the pad and a three-dimensional image of a blue-green planet appeared on the screen. Before he could continue speaking, the doors hissed open again.

  A young man of about eighteen years of age burst into the room, looking wide-eyed and out of breath.

  “Sorry,” he spluttered, wilting under everyone’s gaze. “Got lost, sir.”

  “Private Bradley, correct? The new recruit.” Baker tutted and nodded to the only empty chair in the room. “Hurry up and take a seat before you hold up the entire war effort.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Ginger whispered to Ghost. “Look at him. He’s as green as they get. What the hell’s he doing with us?”

  “Everyone’s green, remember?” Ghost sounded almost as pissed off as she did. “Most of the UEC’s armed forces have barely seen combat with other humans, let alone whatever we’re gonna find out here. Still, you’re right. They could have sent somebody a little more experienced to replace Yates.”

  Ginger bristled at the name. Yates had been the Sergeant before her. It was his death back on New Eden – the last planet humanity tried colonising – that had led to her taking over as leader of Fireteam Sigma.

  “He’ll be dead in five minutes.”

  “Then you won’t have to worry about him for very long,” Ghost replied.

  Duke shuffled his chair to one side so that Private Bradley could squeeze his apologetic wa
y through to the front. A few of the privates from Fireteams Tau and Upsilon smirked as he sat down.

  “This,” Baker continued, pointing at the planet, “is Ennakis. Command have renamed it New Terra. Some of the more observant of you will have noticed we’ve been sitting just outside of its orbit for the past thirty-four hours. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re looking at humanity’s new home.”

  “That’s what they said last time.” The cocky voice belonged to Private Jackson over in Tau. “I don’t see why we couldn’t just take New Eden. Who cares about some dumb little alien reservation, anyway?”

  Ginger rolled her eyes. Unlike Jackson, she’d actually been down to New Eden and met some of those “dumb little aliens” first hand.

  “Funnily enough, the United Earth Collective doesn’t believe that humanity’s first interstellar act should be one of war against the entire galactic community,” replied Baker. “Like it or not, this is the world the Ministerium of Cultured Planets is letting us take. The atmospheric and geological conditions are remarkably similar to that which we experienced back on Earth – before everything went to hell, that is.”

  “If this New Terra is so great,” asked Ghost, “why hasn’t anyone else colonised it yet?”

  Ginger nodded thoughtfully. Now that was a good question. Humanity was a relative latecomer to the planetary party, after all. Many worlds were already taken.

  “They have. That’s the catch.” Staff Sergeant Baker crossed his arms and inhaled deeply. “According to our contacts at the Ministry, New Terra used to be inhabited by a non-spacefaring race whose society rose to a stage we might have considered pre-industrial back on Earth. But, a few years back, an invasive species found its way onto the planet. Carried down by an asteroid, most likely. By the time anyone in the Ministry realised what was going on, the planet had been overrun and the original inhabitants completely wiped out.”

  “I’m not sure I like where this is going,” grumbled Duke.

  “New Terra is ours, providing we eradicate the invasive species first,” Baker confirmed.

  “But the aliens at this Ministry place – they can help us, right?” Jackson suddenly didn’t sound so cocky. “Like… they’ve got military tech like we couldn’t believe, haven’t they?”

  “If they were going to cleanse the planet, they’d glass it from orbit.” Baker shook his head. “Obviously that’s not an option for us if we still want to live on it afterwards. I’m afraid we’re on our own, boys and girls. And no, there’s no third planet. New Eden was a bust, so we’ve gotta make this one work.”

  The mood of the room dropped without another word needing to be spoken. Ginger eventually broke the silence.

  “These things we’re exterminating. Any idea what they look like? Behaviour? Weaknesses, that sort of thing?”

  Baker tapped his data pad and the picture on the screen changed from the planet to a collection of grainy black-and-white photographs. Ginger struggled to make out anything more than a few dark, menacing shadows.

  “These were taken from a drone we sent down yesterday. Unfortunately, they’re all we’ve got – the species in question tends to spend most of its time underground. From what the Ministry tells us, we should expect semi-bipedal insectoids of limited intelligence and muscular anatomy. Six, maybe seven feet in length, though we’ve already detected some slight variation between social castes.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said another private. She was sweating. “Seven feet? I thought we were gonna be clearing out cockroach nests or something – not… not this!”

  “Well, a bit more like giant ants from the sound of things.” Baker shrugged dismissively. “As I said before, nobody really knows that much about what we’re going up against. For now, Command is simply referring to them as bugs and roaches and whatnot. But we’re told the hard work will come from having to systematically cleanse a whole planet rather than the threat of the individual bugs themselves. Nothing we can’t handle, Private.”

  “So we’re being sent in on a recon mission, then?” Duke’s booming voice dominated the room. “Head down there, see what we’re up against and then report back?”

  “You wish. I know we were trained specifically for advance reconnaissance missions, but Command wants everyone down on New Terra pronto. We’re going in with the rest of the invasion.”

  “Pronto?” said Ghost, sitting forward. “How pronto?”

  Baker checked his watch.

  “Five hours and forty minutes,” he replied casually. “That’s when sundown hits this side of the planet. We’ll take the drop ships down under the cover of darkness.”

  “What?” Ginger’s head was suddenly pounding, and she didn’t think it was just from the drink anymore. “But we were told nobody was being redeployed for another week!”

  “Yes, well. What Command wants, Command gets. Right now we have the element of surprise, but we won’t if we hang around in near-orbit for much longer. Not if there’s anything smart down there. Now shut your mouths and open your ears. This is the important bit.”

  Everyone grumbled quietly to themselves as Baker switched the display to the next slide. It showed a bird’s-eye view of the planet’s surface. This one was in colour and far more detailed than the ones before. It must have been taken by a drone much higher up inside New Terra’s atmosphere. Perhaps even from one of the ships in orbit.

  “This,” said Baker, pointing to a developed region in the top-right corner of the photograph, “used to be one of the previous inhabitants’ most prosperous cities. Rhinegarde, they called it. Our mission is to eradicate every last bug from the city so that the UEC can begin its colonisation effort. Simple, yes? Good.”

  He highlighted a dark crack running all the way from one side of the satellite image to the other.

  “This fissure makes the Grand Canyon look like a pothole,” he continued. “It’s over a mile wide. Scans won’t tell us how deep it is. And it would take weeks to navigate our way around on foot. Unfortunately, we have to cross it if we’re to reach Rhinegarde in line with the other divisions.” He tapped an unusual marking on the map. “That’s where this here rectangle comes in – the Bridge of Etmark. That’s our first objective.”

  Bridge? Ginger shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Looked more like a bottleneck to her.

  “That red circle in the bottom-left,” said Duke, referring to a crude graphic overlaying the original photograph. “Is that the drop point, sir?”

  “That’s Rally Point Bravo. Don’t worry about the drop point, private – you leave that to our pilots. If for whatever reason anyone gets separated, you make it your top priority to regroup with everyone else here. It’s elevated and open. Command expects minimal resistance, if any.”

  “Yeah,” Ghost whispered to Ginger, “but how much resistance should we expect?”

  Baker turned the screen off and addressed the uneasy room.

  “So to recap: we rendezvous with the rest of the company at Rally Point Bravo, we secure the Bridge of Etmark and then we advance on the city of Rhinegarde. That’s Operation Ground Zero in a nutshell. Any questions?”

  Jessie from Fireteam Tau raised her hand.

  “Yes, private?”

  “Is it too late to take my chances back on Earth?”

  Everyone laughed nervously. Staff Sergeant Baker pursed his lips to show that even he wasn’t totally devoid of humour.

  “If you want to roast to death on our husk of a homeworld, be my guest. But you’ll be getting there via a first-class ticket out the airlock. Any sensible questions, squad?”

  A dozen solemn faces looked either back at him or down at the floor. He nodded.

  “Good. That’s what I like to hear. There’s five and a half hours left until deployment – I suggest you all get some grub in you, pack your stuff together, and meet up on deck at eleven-hundred and thirty hours. Dismissed.”

  Everybody else slid their fold-away chairs aside and hurried back to their bunk rooms. Ginger sank into her seat and groaned. She
’d only just gotten over her last visit to an alien world humanity wanted to plant a flag on.

  “I guess that means movie night is cancelled,” Ghost sighed. “Shame. I always wanted to see Casablanca before I died.”

  “Oh, and Sergeant Rogers?” Baker called across at her from inside the briefing room doorway. “Make sure you bring our newest recruit up to speed.”

  Private Bradley turned around in his seat and gave her an uncomfortable smile.

  “Good luck,” said Duke, beaming that big, friendly grin of his. He gave her another slap on the back, this one hearty enough to rattle her teeth. “I’ll catch both you ladies on deck.”

  Ghost followed Duke out along with Staff Sergeant Baker and the other two fireteams. Ginger rose to her feet. Private Bradley hesitantly approached.

  “Good morning, ma’am.” The poor boy’s voice sounded nearly as fragile as he looked. “Erm, should we perhaps—”

  “Stop.” Ginger raised a hand and closed her eyes. “Just stop. Whatever you’re about to say, my brain is not in the mood for it. And cut out the ma’am crap. You’ve heard of the phrase, ‘no man left behind’, right?”