Rhodes stepped out of the Ero’s landing bay. He exited onto a beach packed to overflowing with soldiers, equipment, damaged Dusters, medical tents, and stacks of weapons and supply crates.

Rhodes had never served on this planet before, but it resembled too many other battlefields he’d been on.

A line of low hills separated the Legion position from the enemy. Pounding gunfire and the growl of Duster engines drifted on the smoky breeze coming from the front lines.

A matching line of explosions showed Rhodes where the battle line was. The Emal kept swarming over the hills and getting cut down by Legion Jackhammers.

Enemy lasers snickered over those hills, swiped giant pathways of dead bodies through the Legion ranks, and then the lasers swiveled upward to target Legion Dusters and Predators buzzing overhead.

Continuous booming concussions echoed down the hills every time a Duster or Predator exploded.

Thackery, Henshaw, and Fuentes all jumped at the sound. None of the others did. They were used to it.

Rhodes crossed the beach. Too many people rushed past for him to recognize anyone. These people all belonged to support crews and medical teams anyway. All the soldiers he knew would be up there on the front line.

He had to brace himself before he went into the command dome. Rhodes didn’t have to tell Fisher to make himself scarce. Fisher shrank to a tiny dot in the corner of Rhodes’s vision.

Rhodes marched in and found General Kaufman, Colonel Jenner, and Colonel Andre Pitt standing around a table. Computer terminals, maps, and countless reports crowded the surface.

Colonel Jenner’s jaw dropped when he saw Rhodes. “Corban…..” Jenner husked. “Corban Rhodes?”

“Yes, Sir. I’m assigned to you with my unit here.”

“I wasn’t informed of this!” General Kaufman snapped. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You would have to ask General Brewster, Sir,” Rhodes replied in as calm a tone as he could muster. “I was ordered to report to you here. That’s all I know. If you could assign us to our position, we’ll head out to the front line.”

“But you’re….” Colonel Jenner trailed off. He didn’t finish his sentence before he went back to gawking at Rhodes with his jaw on the ground. Jenner barely saw the rest of the battalion.

“Brewster!” General Kaufman snapped. “What the hell is that old lunatic up to now?”

“I guess you can see that as well as anybody, Sir,” Rhodes murmured. “I promise you none of us wanted this.”

“But you….you got killed in action!” Colonel Jenner stammered. “You…..you’re supposed to be dead.”

“I am dead, Sir.” Rhodes turned back to General Kaufman. “Do you have any particular place you’d like us, Sir? If you don’t, I guess we’ll just go out there and do what we can.”

“Um….” General Kaufman pulled himself together with an effort, which was more than Jenner could do.

Kaufman bent over one of his terminals and consulted his charts of the area. “The Emal are the closest to breaking through here—at the Aevod Gap. You could reinforce that and give our boys some room. They’ve been up there for a week without a break.”

Rhodes scowled at the chart in front of Kaufman. The 249th Platoon was closest to the Aevod Gap. Rhodes would see his old comrades up there.

He didn’t say that out loud, though. He only mumbled, “Yes, Sir. No problem.”

“You’re dismissed then, Captain,” Kaufman told him.

Rhodes started to turn away. He sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that the meeting didn’t drag on with everyone asking a billion questions about what Battalion 1 was and how it all happened. He couldn’t stand that.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Just when he thought he could get the hell out of there with some of his dignity intact, Colonel Jenner snapped out of his trance and grabbed Kaufman’s arm. “You can’t send him up there! The 249th is up there! They’ll see him!”

“So?” Kaufman asked.

“So….they know him!” Jenner half-whispered. “They would realize….what he is!”

“I don’t see your point,” Kaufman replied.

Jenner gulped. “Assign him somewhere else. That’s all I’m saying.”

“We can’t. If we send reinforcements anywhere, it has to be the Gap. The 249th is barely holding the Gap as it is.” Kaufman nodded at Rhodes. “You have your orders, Captain.”

“Yes, Sir,” Rhodes replied and walked out. He really hoped he didn’t see anyone else he knew, but he already knew he would.

He barely made it through the door before Colonel Jenner came rushing out after him. “Corban—wait!”

Rhodes stopped walking, but he didn’t turn around. This was rapidly turning into the single most painful experience of this whole nightmarish ordeal.

Rhodes didn’t want to face Jenner, but things were bound to get a whole lot worse when Rhodes finally met up with the 249th. He didn’t look forward to that at all.

Jenner definitely saw the rest of Rhodes’s people now. Jenner left a wide space between himself and the battalion when he circled the group to stand in front of Rhodes.

Once Jenner got into that position, he got his mouth open and that was it. He tried more than once to speak and failed.

His eyes traced every detail of Rhodes’s facial implants. Jenner’s features kept spasming in all the wrong ways. His eyes squinted in misery.

Rhodes waited, but Jenner still couldn’t get his voice to function.

“Go back inside, Sir,” Rhodes finally murmured. “You can’t help me.”

“But you’re….you’re….” Jenner stammered.

Rhodes waited again for Jenner to say something. He couldn’t. His cheek trembled and he gulped down a lump in his throat.

“Go back inside, Jerry,” Rhodes breathed even lower. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Jenner opened and closed his mouth a few more times. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to another.

The few times he actually summoned the nerve to look at the people standing behind Rhodes, Jenner nearly collapsed with emotion.

Rhodes waited a few minutes more, but Jenner still didn’t move or make a sound. Rhodes couldn’t stand this any longer.

He stepped around Jenner and walked off down the beach with his people behind him.

Rhodes didn’t look back. He walked as fast as he dared to put as much distance as possible between himself and Colonel Jenner.

Fisher waited a few seconds before he expanded himself so Rhodes could see him. Fisher overlaid The Grid on the surrounding hills.

“The Aevod Gap is between those two mountains.” Fisher indicated the spot with a red dot so Rhodes could see it. “It forms a choke point. The platoons can cut down the Emal as they come through.”

Rhodes adjusted The Grid himself. He pivoted it downward so he surveyed the mountains from above.

“The Emal are amassing an airstrike force behind the Gap. They plan to fly over and bombard the platoons from the air. The choke point won’t help the Legion then.”

“What do you want to do?” Lauer asked behind Rhodes’s back.

“We’ll fly over and bombard the Emal strike force. They aren’t ready to deploy yet. None of them are airborne. They think they have all the time in the world to mount their offensive.”

“What about the platoons?” Rhinehart asked.

“If we draw the Emal away from the Gap, the platoons can stay where they are. We’ll take the pressure off them that way.”

Rhodes crossed the beach to where the Ero dropped off the battalion. The ship wasn’t here anymore. Rhodes’s interface with Fisher told him the ship had already retreated into orbit.

Rhodes pretended not to think about his capsule and all his soldiers’ capsules thousands of miles away where the battalion couldn’t get to them.

The battalion’s Strikers sat parked on the beach in the Ero’s place. None of the support crews had time even to notice such state-of-the-art prototype craft.

Rhodes loaded into his cockpit and got the usual cheery greeting from Rio. “Captain! How charming to see you again!”

“Save it, pal. We’re going into battle.”

“Even better! Who are we fighting?”

“The Emal. Bring up as much information as you can on their base ships.”

“We don’t have any information on their base ships.”

Rhodes spun around fast. “You don’t? Why not?”

“Because no Emal spacecraft have ever been recovered from the battlefield. They either blow up or the Emal retrieve them. We don’t know anything about their craft.”

Rhodes groaned. “Fantastic.”

“Hey, what about hitting their power supply like we did in that training session?” Dietz suggested. “They’re running lasers. They must have some power source. Right?”

“What about it, Rio?” Rhodes asked. “How do the Emal power their lasers?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know that, either, Captain. I wish I could be more help.”

“They must reload or refuel somehow,” Coulter added.

“I don’t think so,” Rio replied. “No Legion troops have ever reported seeing the Emal reload or refuel.”

“There’s no sign on The Grid of any power supply feeding the Emal lasers,” Fisher chimed in. “However they’re powering their weapons system, it doesn’t involve any power station or lines like we saw in the training session.”

“We’ll just have to rely on good old-fashioned firepower,” Rhodes replied. “Stand by to launch.”

“What are we standing by for?” Thackery asked.

“We’re standing by for you to shut your mouth,” Coulter told her. “That way, we’ll be waiting until the end of time and we’ll all get through this without a scratch.”

“Launch and follow me,” Rhodes interrupted. “We’re going in.”

End of Chapter 24.