A Heart of Ice (The Great War Book 4) Read online

  A Heart of Ice

  The Great War, Volume 4

  Ralph Kern

  Published by Ralph Kern, 2020.

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

  A HEART OF ICE

  First edition. September 3, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Ralph Kern.

  Written by Ralph Kern.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A Heart of Ice (The Great War, #4)

  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

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the readers who bought, read and reviewed The Great War so far.

  Thanks to Caroline for her patience with me while writing this.

  Thanks to Jamie Glover and his amazing art. Steve for his Typography which makes it stand out. Shay, for her eagle-eyed editing. Donna for her proofing. To Carl the Cantankerous Gunnery Sergeant for his tech guide and military advice. To Don, Tim C Taylor and Greg for their invaluable advice and final readthroughs.

  And, as ever, a heart-felt thanks to all those who serve.

  Mailing List:

  www.Ralphkern.com

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  Email:

  [email protected]

  Chapter 1

  General Tor Hest

  Bassoon System – Revlon

  General Aria Tor Hest folded her arms in front of her chest and composed her expression in the way she had practiced in her spartan cabin’s mirror. It was, she knew, perfect. Designed to exude what her mentor, Marshal Richter Galen, called the Four Cs: a carefully cultivated calm confidence.

  Through the panoramic forward-facing viewscreen, the crescent of the People’s world of Revlon loomed. Already a staccato of explosions flickered in orbit. She knew what each of those fireflies symbolized, that the fighters and bombers of the Hegemony Aerospace Corps were swarming around the monolithic, yet obsolete orbital fortifications, tearing them to pieces.

  A shower of embers descended across the night side. More fighters, bombers, and jump mechs plummeting through the atmosphere to the surface amid the burning debris falling from the furious battle above.

  Something big—perhaps another fortress, or maybe a People’s vessel—went up in orbit. A fireball bloomed as its reactor failed catastrophically, and turned the operations room of the converted freighter Hest stood in, Storm, to a stark monochrome.

  She felt a presence step up next to her.

  “Their orbital defenses are falling faster than we anticipated, General.”

  Hest grunted in response. What she’d have given to be there among her descending mech forces, like she had been at Asteria. Plunging toward the ground, into the maelstrom and thrill of combat. The exhilaration of beating the odds yet again, scorching through the skies and making it down to the surface. Advancing across fields and through towns. Smashing through fortifications.

  Fighting the enemy. As a soldier should.

  A false memory, maybe. Perhaps it had been infinitely more terrifying than that. Perhaps time had made her view it through...how did that old saying from Terra go? That was it, “through rose-tinted glasses.”

  Now, as a general—and a full one, at that—being so involved in direct action was forever beyond her. A shame and a pity, when her heart lay with the men and women advancing into danger below. For her these days, war was a glorified computer game to be played, moving and positioning not just individual units, but entire armies measured in the thousands to best defeat the enemy.

  Hest shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to dwell in nostalgia and wishful thinking. She turned to the man next to her. “Very good.”

  “The 3rd Mech Group and 9th Army are reporting lighter casualties than expected on landing.” General Tor Nowen moved away from her and took up position overlooking the tactical holo glowing in the center of the operations room. He looked up, his hard face underlit by its illumination. “I’d say, Aria, that these sub-human savages are already learning what it means to have all hell bearing down on them.”

  “Quite,” Hest managed in response. Nowen wasn’t a bad officer, she conceded. He was certainly better than most of the toadies and sycophants which infested the ranks of the Hegemony army. Still, the passion in the contempt he felt for those the Neos deemed inferior burned bright. A contempt for the People. The Loggists. Even for some of the other nations which had joined or expressed a tentative interest in the Coalition, like the Iconian Regime or the distant Dawn Empire.

  And he wasn’t even the worst. Within Hegemony space, even their own citizens were judged. The infirm and homosexuals were deemed a waste of time and precious resources—they added nothing to the genetic purity of humanity. The Executors visited them in the night, and they were never seen again. And, as this war dragged on, it seemed there were less and less Galtons who had a problem with this as the relentless Neo propaganda played on every form of media. And, worryingly, there was more and more indiscriminate brutality to the culls taking place, at home and abroad. The slightest hint of those things consigned entire families to oblivion, the requirement for any kind of burden of proof long in the past.

  Hest gave a wince at the memories of the ovens of the Executors burning night and day, spreading the ash of burned corpses over the worlds the Hegemony had claimed.

  Her concerns had a time and a place, though. And that was when she could talk freely to like-minded fellow officers away from the prying ears of the Executors and their spies. Officers who seemed to be reducing in numbers each day. Not here, on the day of the largest invasion in galactic history.

  A day when her army was fulfilling the Hegemony’s stated purpose of obtaining the worlds of the People. The one regime in the galaxy more brutal, more authoritarian than her own.

  “Move us on to phase two,” she said, almost at a whim. With the enemy’s defenses crumbling before them, there was the opportunity to save precious time. And, as far as she was concerned, every second counted during this invasion. In every invasion the Neo Hegemony turned its hand to, in fact. Momentum had to be maintained, for to be bogged down would be death. “Signal the 9th Army; they are to hold the landing zones. The 4th Army is to drop its advanced elements and join the 3rd Mech and advance to contact.”

  How strange, to maneuver entire armies like the individual mechs and troopers I would have a few short years ago.

  “Understood.” Nowen turned. Behind them, tiers of comms officers sat in long rows. Their interface to the millions of men and women of the invasion forces. He barked her orders, letting the myriad controllers translate her strategy into tactics for the individual units.

  The bustle and chatter redoubled at Nowen’s shouted commands. Hest returned her gaze to the holo as blinking icons of the converted civilian transport ships descended toward the planet, disgorging wave after wave of assault shuttles and dropships. In orbit, other vessels took up position, ready to drop more troops and mechs into the enemy’s strongholds. Fighters and bombers swarmed and danced around them, able to pounce on any threat on the ground, in air, or in space.

  A well-oiled machine, Hest gave a thin smile. She didn’t agree with the Neo ethos. But, by Father Terra, she felt satisfaction in seeing her well-drilled, well-trained force slam into the world. And that was despite—not because—of her government’s leadership.

  And it was time to pitch that machine—that war machine—against what the vile People’s regime could muster in response to an invasion of one of their key agricultural worlds.

  ***

  Major Gan Corla’s Wolf fighter thundered through the bloated, roiling clouds. The angry dark mass hadn’t disgorged its payload of rain onto the miserable, already sodden, surface yet, but from the look of it, it soon would.

  Like a switch had been flicked, he surged beneath the overcast sky. The strangely claustrophobic feeling of the cloud layer above and the patchwork fields below gave the false impression he only had
a thin sliver of sky in which his S-91 Wolf fighter could maneuver.

  Not that he needed much room. Even if the clouds really were a physical barrier, he would use every inch of space to his advantage.

  His canopy rapidly populated with targets. Airfields, military establishments. Towns and villages. Soldiers and armor concentrations were all bracketed in digital boxes.

  “All squadrons, execute.”

  Behind him, dozens of Wolfs and Raptors erupted from the cloud layer, their formation spreading into a vast fan. Unseen, and even higher, the larger Hydra bombers would be eagerly making their way to their own targets, ready to disgorge their massive payloads of destruction.

  “Where are they?” he murmured. The orbital ships hadn’t detected anything beyond a token amount of People’s Aerospace Army fighters in space and air. The industrial-looking primitive craft and their orbital launch platforms had been swept aside with disdainful ease. But, one thing the People weren’t lacking was sheer numbers. There must undoubtedly be many wings left on this mud ball.

  Except they weren’t here.

  He frowned, banking around to follow a flight of four Raptors lining up for an attack run on the tarmacked crisscross of an aerospace field. With the tap of his canopy, a window opened, zooming in.

  What in Father Terra’s name?

  Row upon row of People’s Aerospace Army craft lined the parking strips, wingtip to wingtip. Dozens of them. They hadn’t even been taxied to the dispersals to prevent them being wiped out in single strafing runs.

  He felt a chuckle rise in his chest as his fighters and bombers streaked toward the base.

  Seriously?

  He’d heard that these inferiors were in fear of their own rulers, but he hadn’t expected them to be so utterly paralyzed they wouldn’t even launch in defense of their world without express orders.

  Shaking his head disdainfully, he dispelled the amusement he felt. The Prime was correct—the Hegemony really was doing the galaxy a favor in getting rid of these idiots. Any who survived would just pollute humanity’s gene pool.

  But, that did mean the job his Wolf superiority fighters were here to do—to provide combat aerospace patrol and take out enemy defenders, for the bombers, attack craft, and ground forces to have a clear run—didn’t exist.

  No matter. It just made his life simpler. And less risky, for once in this whole damned war. Perhaps the occasional cakewalk was nothing to regret.

  “All squadrons,” he called over his comm to his wing and those units attached. “Adjustment to plan. Raptors are to target hangers, fuel, and ammo dumps. All Wolfs, commence strafing runs on fighters, then bombers. Go.”

  He dipped his wing, chicaning his way around to approach a row of craft squatting idly along a taxiway. More detail resolved, his practiced eye identifying them as GEF-1 aerospace—and he thought the following words with contempt—superiority fighters.

  Squeezing the trigger on his stick, his fighter shuddered in response as his powerful twin pulse guns lashed at the beginning of the row and he let his fire track along it. The blue tracer tore through the line. Fighter after fighter exploded into billowing fireballs in response, the ones he missed being devastated by the destruction of their neighbors.

  Hauling his stick up, he banked to the left, threading past the tall spire of a control tower already crumbling into fiery ruin under the attack of one of his wingmates. Ahead, the vast squat cylinder of a fuel dump erupted violently from a bomb released by a Raptor. All around him, Hegemony fighters and bombers tore through the base, the sources of the sporadic bursts of anti-aerospace fire and blossoms of flak pounced on and destroyed mercilessly.

  It was almost too easy.

  Chapter 2

  Private Iriana Sharov

  Revlon

  Private Iriana Sharov looked around the cramped confines of the stinking freight transport. Something repurposed from hauling around cattle. Only instead of cows and sheep, the filthy metal caging was packed in far more tightly than it would ever have been for its original purpose with the men and women of the 21st Rifle Corps of the 13th People’s Army.

  It had been a whirlwind. Fire and destruction had rained down. No one knew who was attacking, what was going on, what they were supposed to do, and where they were supposed to go.

  Finally, someone, somewhere, had made a decision. They had been packed into commandeered transports. And then they were moving.

  The transport heeled over sickeningly on its inadequate stuttering droning repulsors. She slammed into the boy, Horgi Evri, next to her. He grunted in response and irritably pushed her back against the person on the other side. From outside came dull thuds and cracks. Some far away. Others petrifyingly close.

  A coughing splutter came from a soldier sitting further down the uncomfortable metal bench. Then he vomited explosively, splattering the woman opposite.

  Her grandfather had never told her about this. The reality of war. The hurry-up-and-wait. The cramped conditions. When he told tales of his fight against the oppressing aristocracy in the Revolutionary War, it had been full of quiet pride and glory.

  Not the ugliness of this reality.

  “Maros, you dirty shit.” The woman wiped her armor in vain, managing only to smear the acrid sick over herself as the transport lurched again. Sharov’s stomach rose into her chest even as moans washed through the bay. The lights of the transport flickered on and off in time with the swaying; probably a jury-rigged power coupling not seated right.

  Any second, Sharov thought. Any second, one of the explosions from outside would instead be them. They would simply die. They wouldn’t even know what had happened. What had killed them. They would just cease to be.

  She didn’t even know where she was. The People’s agricultural world of Revlon...that was as far as she knew. But where on that world?

  Somewhere.

  That was as much as Sharov could say. Yeah, she could eliminate Lorell Starport, where the 13th Army had been based for the past few weeks. But they had been sent from there with no more warning from the officers in command than shouted orders to load up into the cramped transports. Being pushed and bullied from one place to another.

  And then they were here.

  The sound of the transport’s engines increased to a roar and she found herself driven against the neighbor opposite Evri again.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, her voice barely reaching over the groans. The cloying smell was getting to her, making her head feel heavy.

  “No bother.” Nicos Androv gently pushed her back upright. He awkwardly reached into his pocket and proffered something to her. “You’re looking a little green around gills, Iriana. Here, take this. It might help.”

  A little silver-foil wrap. Chewing gum. She nodded gratefully at the man. He was a little older than most—mid-twenties standard, maybe? Certainly nowhere near as young as the majority in the platoon. He must really have pissed someone off to remain a private. Most served their time before being allocated a nice wholesome job in a factory on one of the industrial worlds and being allowed to marry. Not forced to stay in the army. She took the gum and shoved it in her mouth, chomping it till it softened and released a burst of mint flavor. For a moment, it overpowered the foul taste of the air afflicting her taste buds.

  “You got another of those, comrade?” Evri, on her opposite side, asked. His young perspiration-glistening face looked too small relative to the bulky slabs which comprised his combat armor.

  “I wish, Evri,” Androv replied. “It’s like rocking horse shit. Only harder to find.”

  With a bone-jarring thud, they struck something. The ground? Sharov didn’t know. The whole transport could finally have given up the ghost, leaving them to slam to the muddy earth.

  The door released, falling open, turning into a ramp and revealing a yellow sky beyond. A silhouette appeared, backlit by the glow of the sun. Huge. Intimidating. Terrifying. A piercing whistle was blown.

  “Out, out, out,” the figure roared.

  She pulled herself hand over fist to her feet through the rising scrum of armored bodies. The pack of people pushed outward in the general direction of the hatch. She had no say, she just had to move with the crowd. All of them were desperate to reach some semblance of fresh air and escape from the cloying, claustrophobic confines of the stinking cabin.