A Rain of Fire (The Great War Book 1) Read online

  A Rain of Fire

  The Great War, Volume 1

  Ralph Kern

  Published by Ralph Kern, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  A RAIN OF FIRE

  First edition. February 25, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Ralph Kern.

  Written by Ralph Kern.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Technology

  Author’s Note

  This book is dedicated to Private 5185387 Henry Patrick ‘Wink’ Goble of the Gloucestershire Regiment. Killed at Dunkirk on the 27th May 1940.

  And to his wife, Patricia.

  Thank you.

  Acknowledgements

  There are many people to thank in the writing of this story. The first is Wink, and his surviving family. I hope they feel I have honored him with this story – and thank you for allowing me to use his name.

  Caroline, for putting up with an author’s antisocial hours!

  The writer group I’m a member of. Their support is immeasurable.

  Jamie Glover for the amazing art. To see he ran with this concept is an understatement. Steve Beaulieu for the awesome typography that makes it really pop.

  Shay Van Zwoll for her great editing.

  Tim C Taylor and Don Mies for their thorough proofing.

  Claire Wood for her website design.

  The many people who offered help, advice and support through this process.

  I am eternally grateful to you all.

  Mailing List:

  www.Ralphkern.com

  Facebook Site:

  https://www.facebook.com/Ralphkernwrites/

  Pre-order Book 2 of The Great War here:

  A Titan’s Vengeance

  Chapter 1

  Colonel Tor Hest

  Galton Orbit

  The glowing red digits of the timer projected on the cockpit heads-up display counted inexorably down.

  This is happening...this is really happening. Colonel Aria Tor Hest tried to focus on the task at hand. Running through pre-jump checks. Ensuring her Lance was ready. Preparing for the brutal business to come.

  And she failed. It was only training which guided her hands on the controls, even as she looked through the scratched, pitted cockpit window. Past the swarms of gently twinkling ships and jump mechs hanging in orbit over the dawning hemisphere of a pristine world. She wanted to capture in her mind, to look at—to really look at—her world, Galton, the capital of the Neo Hegemony. Maybe for the last time.

  Just on the terminator line, where night turned to day, lay the peninsula of Herriot Province. Her family’s estate sat in a meadow, a short distance from the cliff-lined coast. There, her children would be waking to a new dawn—both real, and metaphorical. She sought to etch a picture of her once beautiful land in her mind, the land which generations of her family had toiled over. Deep green tracts of lush forests surrounded the rough-cut stone of her manor while beyond, the vibrant blue Lestan Ocean bordered the peninsula. A small village, quaint in appearance, where her retainers lived nestled in a valley inland down a winding country road.

  But also, from her elevated position in orbit, she saw the brutal craters and blemishes still unrepaired from the last war—the Great War—marring the land. The war the now dead Galton Imperium had lost so badly. The reason why she, and millions of others, had heeded this new call to action, united under a new banner and with a new cause.

  A cause irresistible in its clarion call. Especially to the youth.

  To take revenge. To take back their honor. To finish what their parents had started.

  And to take their rightful destiny.

  Her console chimed and the stern, scarred face of Field Marshal Richter Galen appeared on the HUD, obliterating the view of her home, bringing her musing to a crashing halt.

  “All units of Army Group Alpha: Rain Fire Phase Two is a go.” The marshal paused. For dramatic effect, or through nervousness at what he was about to unleash, Hest didn’t know. But the pause didn’t last long. “In Father Terra’s name, execute.”

  Hest pressed her head back against the leather headrest. She took a deep breath in, even as before her came a dizzying ripple of flashes. Dozens. Hundreds, then thousands of bursts of red light washed over Galton. So many, it would turn the night side of the world to a hellish day.

  A brightness grew within the cockpit, its intensity turning the world before her to monochrome. Then even that was obliterated by the fierce light.

  The blinding brightness disappeared as if a switch had been thrown. Galton had been replaced. She found herself hovering over another planet, the Orillion Republic world of Asteria in the Thuine System, her jump drive tuned to bring her to a sub-orbital velocity.

  Glistening spider webs of cities crossed the night side, already turned a blurred orange as flames tore across them from the Aerospace Corps’ softening attack in Rain Fire Phase One. She craned her neck up. The number of stations and ships in Asteria’s orbit was so dense as to be visible to the naked eye. And directly above her loomed the nearest of the Republic’s massive fortresses: huge weapon-encrusted asteroids hauled into the world’s orbit a decade before.

  But it wasn’t a serene vision.

  Streamers of weapons fire lashed across the vista. The Republicans were good. They hadn’t hesitated. They had responded decisively to the swarms of Hegemony fighters tearing through them and the hordes of jump mechs appearing in their vicinity.

  They may not have hesitated, but they hadn’t responded effectively.

  The huge cannons and myriad weapons of the orbital fortresses were designed to ward off a conventional assault. To deal with fleets led by capital ships spiraling into orbit from above, not hundreds of fighters striking at them from below. And definitely not thousands of jump mechs screaming down to the surface of the world they hung over.

  No, th
e Aerospace Corps, the fighter and bomber arm of the Hegemony’s military, couldn’t fight the Republic on their terms. So Galton had changed those terms to ones they could win.

  The gently curved line of the horizon crept up the cockpit window as her mech fell from orbit. The fires from re-entry already flickering up the war machine’s hull. She felt the buffeting of entry as she hit the atmosphere proper. Spread across her vision, she could see thousands of fiery streaks plummeting with her. Her jump mech rocked as a squadron of S-91 Wolf Space Superiority fighters blurred past vertically down, the agile craft plummeting to the surface ahead of her invasion force leaving a trail of turbulence.

  Anti-aerospace fire opened up from the surface. Wispy spirals of missiles, ineffective against the agile fighters’ electronic warfare suites, were deadly against the vulnerable mechs. Flak blossomed all around her. Streamers of pulse fire arced across the sky, both from above and below.

  The clouds of descending jump mechs were riddled with a staccato of explosions. Hest felt herself being thrust back and forth within the tight confines of her cockpit, knowing death could come at any time with no more warning than seeing her mech disintegrate around her, leaving her to fall screaming to the surface.

  One of her platoon mates exploded next to her as a missile slammed into the falling mech, turning it into a shower of debris tumbling alongside her. She gritted her teeth, her fear turning to anger at the loss. Another son or daughter of Galton dead—along with many others—before they’d even truly engaged the enemy.

  She forced down the anguish at the loss. Now was not the time to mourn.

  Hest glanced at the altimeter as she punched through a misty layer of stratus cloud. One hundred thousand feet. Close enough.

  “AA fire is heavy. All mechs drop pods.” She didn’t wait for an acknowledgment; instead, she reached up and flicked four switches. With a series of thuds, the drop pods released from the mech’s back and plunged down alongside her amid a shower of chaff and flares, a probably vain attempt to ward off the fire seeking her out.

  All around, the radar returns multiplied as the others did the same. Thousands of mechs each loosed four drop pods containing a soldier.

  But even that impressive force would be a drop in the ocean against the resources of an entire world.

  Among the descending cloud of jump mechs and personnel drop pods, assault shuttles plunged down, adding thousands more troops to the fray. And far above, the heavy transports containing tens of thousands more soldiers would already be entering the system, perfectly synchronized for when...

  A huge explosion illuminated the night side.

  One of the Republic’s much-vaunted fortresses had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole in Asteria’s defensive coverage which the transports would wedge into.

  The altimeter spun down. More fighters surged past, the punished pilots likely redded out by the intense negative gee they were subjected to as they plunged into the atmosphere.

  The vibration of her passage distorted her vision as her deceleration rockets fired, but even so, from the horizon, monstrous mushroom clouds bloomed into existence. Each one was a pyre on which thousands were dying. Hest winced at the thought of the vile nuclear weapons being used. But they were cheap, and they were effective.

  And it was no more than what the Republic and the Kingdom had inflicted on the worlds, and allies, of the Galton Imperium all those years ago.

  She closed on the surface. Explosions stitched across fields and from clusters of buildings as she raced toward them. It was time she stopped being a passenger.

  Soon, her work would begin. Her keen eye sought the small town, which was her immediate objective.

  With a thunderous burst of retro rockets, the jump mech slammed into the ground. A geyser of dirt erupted from the force of her impact. The four drop pods of her mounted infantry speared into the field next to Hest. She keyed a switch. The actuator braces tightened around her arms and legs, transferring her muscle movements into driving the mech’s limbs.

  The mech—Hest—reflexively ducked as a lance of light appeared; a Beamer anti-armor laser narrowly missed her. She stood from her crouch on the fire-blackened dirt, raising her arm and clenched her fist. Her pulse cannon fired.

  A withering hail of electric-blue rounds riddled the building the beam had come from. Destruction scythed through it, turning the structure into a battered collapsing shell.

  Something pinged off her armor. A brave, foolish soldier stood in the open, firing a rifle at her. Hest lifted her arm and fired again. The man disappeared, torn to pieces under the ferocity of her weapon.

  From all around him, other mechs and drop pods thudded into the ground while above, fighters thundered over. And higher, the first of the huge civilian freighters converted into troop transports advanced into orbit.

  The invasion of the Orillion Republic had begun.

  And the same was happening across the whole of the Arcadian Sector.

  Chapter 2

  Admiral Darrow

  New Avalon – Admiralty House

  Admiral Jonathan Darrow swept down the long corridor of Admiralty House, the heels of his gleaming black leather knee-length boots clicking on the veined marble floor. To either side, busts, holo-pics and watercolors cluttered the wood-panel walls, depicting battles from history and the leaders of yesteryear.

  Two guards drew to attention as he approached the imposing double doors. He noted in satisfaction that the ceremonial red uniforms were gone, replaced by the dark gray of battle armor. Good, because one thing he’d garnered from the messages urgently pinging his comm was that now wasn’t the time to be letting tradition dictate dress order.

  The soldiers snapped off perfect salutes as he drew close before turning to allow him to pass unimpeded.

  He nodded, then flicked an automatic salute in return as the deceptively sturdy doors rumbled open. They may have looked like mere wood, ornate and ancient. But it was a façade, hiding battle steel which could take a bunker buster bomb without bowing.

  Tapping his foot, he waited impatiently for the doors to open sufficiently for him to twist through.

  How the bloody hell had this happened? We moved the expeditionary force into the Republic precisely to stop this situation from arising.

  The bustle of officers filled the operations room beyond. In a stark contrast to the hallway, no expense had been spared in ensuring every facet was state of the art, including the vast hologrammatic situation map slowly rotating in the middle of the room.

  He gave a long exhalation as he took in what it showed. It made for depressing viewing. The green bulge of Republic space had red tendrils stretching through it from its neighboring star nation, the Galton Hegemony—no, Darrow corrected himself—the Neo Hegemony now. Each of the red lines creeping forward was a Neo strike force gaining more territory in a series of massive surprise assaults than they had taken in the Great War of twenty-two years ago.

  “Admiral.” A mug of steaming hot tea was thrust into his hand and he accepted it with a grunt. Something stronger might have been more welcome right now given what he was seeing. He silently wished for the bottle of Silas Number One sitting in the bottom drawer of his desk as he watched the full-scale invasion of their strongest ally in the Arcadian Sector.

  “What do we have?” he cast the whimsy aside as he addressed his head of intelligence.

  Captain Raoul Martinez looked up from the console he stood over. His face glistened with perspiration, and it likely wasn’t because of temperature in the fiercely air-conditioned room. “Sir, the Republicans have just been handed their arses. On a plate.”

  Darrow raised his eyebrow, allowing his expression to portray his disapproval at the staff officer’s report. “A few more facts and a little less rhetoric, if you please, Captain.”

  The man pursed his lips. Not from the rebuke, Darrow wagered, but in having to articulate the horrendous scenario unfolding.

  “Neo Hegemony forces have entered the Republic,
striking here, here, and here.” Martinez gestured at three tendrils stretching through the hollow display. Darrow cocked his head. The Republic’s core systems of Orillia, Asteria, and Balarie. The admiral frowned; each of those heavily populated worlds were guarded by the Republic’s much-vaunted orbital fortresses, not that they looked to have slowed the Hegemony forces down one single iota. Off shoots from the main advances spread wide, the enemy striking secondary targets. “Initial reports suggest—”

  Darrow flicked his eyes to look at the ashen captain. “Suggest?”

  “Suggest,” Martinez continued undaunted, for the time being immune to Darrow’s exacting standards of report. “They will fall.”

  “Lost Earth,” Darrow cursed.

  Those bloody fortresses. Impenetrable to assault, my arse. The sheer arrogance of the Republic in hedging their defenses on the huge things, which had now proven to be little more than exceptionally large and expensive bullseyes.

  “How, Captain?” Darrow asked slowly, processing furiously even as he spoke. “How did this happen?”

  “Intel is sporadic. But, so far, it appears they direct dropped at least a dozen mechanized divisions on each world with an indeterminate number of infantry, supported by aerospace fighters and bombers to gain superiority.”

  “And the fortresses themselves?”

  “Fortress line Valianter over Asteria appears to have been completely destroyed. Again, intel is scarce, but if I were a betting man, I’d say the Republicans scuttled them to stop their seizure.”

  “And the others?”

  “Lines Defiante and Honourous over Orillia and Balarie are at around fifty percent each, however they appear to be offering minimal resistance now. They’ve either been taken, still fighting, or...”

  “Their COs didn’t have the balls to push the button.”

  Darrow massaged his clean-shaven cheek. A confusing emotion washed through him. There was disbelief at what he was looking at, of course. A supposedly hamstrung enemy had managed to take on the most significant emplaced nation in the sector and, to all intents and purposes, appeared to be winning. And yes, there was a glimmer of admiration there too. Neo Hegemony forces had managed it without naval support. Hell, they barely had a space-going navy worth a damn. The Treaty of Charis laid it out: a couple of capital ships which would barely be classed as more than heavy cruisers in any other navy, a handful of destroyers, and a few patrol craft.