The Battalion 1 Striker group fell in formation, swooped farther west clear of the battle, and dropped low to skim closer to the ground. They blasted across the countryside approaching the Ravager carries parked west of Thaklia.

Rio interfaced with the Ero bridge staff to alert the ship that the battalion was coming in. “We have critically injured crewmen on board. We’ll need medical personnel to meet us in the landing bay.”

Rhodes started to shut his eyes. The Ero medical staff wouldn’t be able to help the battalion. The only option was to ship Rhodes and his people back to Coleridge Station.

That meant an eight-week conversion cycle before any of them found someone qualified to treat their injuries. Would any of the battalion survive that trip?

Rhodes was really starting to look forward to dying during a conversion cycle. A harsh, snapping, male voice brought him back to reality with a jolt.

“You can’t just abandon those platoons out there to die, Captain! I demand that you go back out there and give them cover while they retreat out of the city.”

Rhodes had to summon all his effort to haul his heavy eyelids open. A man’s face hovered in front of him on The Grid.

Rhodes went through another torturous thought process before he placed the bushy eyebrows, the lined face, and the deep scowl glaring at him from The Grid. It was Captain Parker Ackerman, Captain of the Ero.

His face hung there between Fisher and Rio in the middle of Rhodes’s view, but of course the Ero captain didn’t see the two SAMs.

Ackerman’s image showed his neck, shoulders, and part of his chest, too. The image looked like something Rhodes would see if Ackerman had been talking to him through a regular Legion Ravager’s communications system.

Rhodes gulped to get his parched through working. Maybe Ackerman could see what a mess Rhodes was right now.

“Did you hear my communication just now, Captain?” Rhodes asked. “My whole party is injured—badly injured. We can’t even fly our own ships and two of my men are unconscious. These computer programs are flying our ships. We can’t go back to help the platoons. That’s your job—and the other Ravagers’ jobs. Why don’t you launch and give the platoons cover to retreat out of the city?”

Ackerman’s face went through a series of conflicted expressions. His eyes dipped like he was looking down at Rhodes’s body for the first time.

“Well….” he blustered. “What’s the point of you coming out here to fight for us if leave our troops without cover?”

Rhodes took a deep breath. The rest of the battalion listened to his conversation through the interface—except for those members of the battalion who were unconscious. Even the SAMs listened.

“Are you under orders to evacuate the platoons? If I take my people back into danger, get the platoons out of Thaklia, and they make it back to the Ravagers, will you take them off the planet or will you keep them here to go on fighting?”

Rhodes knew the answer as soon as he said the words. Captain Ackerman’s features spasmed in some new and creative directions.

His mouth twisted in strange shapes before he worked up the nerve to speak. “I don’t make command decisions about what the platoons do or don’t do, Captain. You should know that.”

“I do know that. I also know that I’m responsible for these people’s lives. We barely survived getting captured by the Emal.”

Ackerman’s jaw dropped. “You got captured….by the Emal…..?”

“We already pulled more than one diversion to give the platoons as much cover as we could. We risked everything and we still might lose some of our people. We’re coming in.”

Rhodes manipulated The Grid to end the communication. He felt himself about to pass out, too.

He must have lost a lot of blood. Some of his internal organs or components might have gotten irreparably damaged when the Emal tried to remove his implants.

He barely managed to croak, “Get us out of here, Rio,” and collapsed back in his seat. He couldn’t keep his eyes open a second longer.

Rio didn’t say a word. He turned back toward the Ero and picked up speed closing with the Ravager line.

The other Strikers followed. No one spoke. Rhodes couldn’t look at The Grid anymore. It made him sick—sicker than he already felt.

He really needed to put his foot down and refuse to take the battalion into battle ever again—at least until the doctors and technicians worked out all the bugs in the system. This was getting ridiculous.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

What would it actually take—someone getting killed? Oh, what the hell was Rhodes thinking? The Battalion 1 project already killed dozens of people.

Gannon, Poole, Cope, Taylor, and everyone else like them were already dead in this lunatic experiment. They were just as dead if they died in the lab as if they got killed on the battlefield.

All those considerations faded away when the Strikers approached the Ero. The ship would take the Strikers on board and Rhodes could forget about Sulia for the rest of his life.

The Emal would conquer this planet long before he and the battalion ever made it back to Coleridge Station. The war would be over—or this part of it. He would never come back here.

He just had to get his people into their capsules. He didn’t have to think beyond that. He couldn’t think beyond that. Just accomplishing that one task looked like an impossible undertaking from here.

He wouldn’t have been able to do it at all without Rio and the other Strikers. Some of the battalion would be too injured to walk to their capsules. How would Rhodes get them there? He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to carry them—not in this condition.

Relief flooded him on the last approach to the Ero. Rio shrieked up on the Ravager line from behind and circled the Ero to enter the landing bay.

The launch doors sat open for the Ero crew to enter and exit. They worked on the ship, provided support to platoons and officers, set up the command dome behind the battle line, and carried out a dozen other functions to establish the Legion presence on this planet.

Rio flew within a dozen feet of the launch doors when a massive laser shot from an Emal base ship pivoted out of the city. The shot smashed the Ravager right next to the Ero.

In seconds, more punishing concussions slammed Ravagers up and down the line. The Emal bombardment hit both Ravagers on both sides of the Ero. A third shot struck the dirt right between the ship’s landing gear.

The Ero toppled away. Rio was flying too fast and veered into one of the nearby explosions.

His grid lines skewed at the last possible second. He yelled a warning, but Rhodes couldn’t make out the words.

The prongs locked him to the seat so he couldn’t move. He would have been thrown hard against the cockpit dashboard by the impact.

Rio scattered into a jumble of grid lines and barely reformed into a ball before he hit the ground. Continuous explosions sent the ball rolling away from the attack.

Rhodes heard SAMs yelling all over the battlefield. The Ero corrected and launched to get out of danger, but it was only one of five of the original fleet of twenty that even made it off the ground.

Enoch and Titan had been in the farthest rear of the Striker group. They stayed Strikers, punched through raging firestorms, and streaked away into the atmosphere again.

Rio’s grid lines expanded, straightened out into a long, thin, projectile, tumbled onto its end, and vaulted upward flying impossibly fast. These SAMs could manipulate The Grid so much faster and more easily than a person could.

He changed back into a Striker and whizzed away from the bombardment to rejoin the others.

Rio’s face rotated from right to left in The Grid checking on the other SAMs. They talked to each other in a rapid barrage of orders and exchanged information.

All their voices got confused in Rhodes’s mind. He couldn’t concentrate well enough to distinguish what they were talking about.

So many SAMs talked too fast. He wouldn’t have been able to understand even if his mind had been working right. Rio and Fisher gave orders to the other SAMs.

The Grid showed Rhodes exactly how far the surviving Ravagers didn’t make it away from the Emal bombardment.

They barely got off the ground before brutal laser fire pounded them back down to the ground. No one would be able to evacuate like this. The battalion couldn’t even get near the Ero.

Rhodes summoned all his last remaining energy to call over the noise. “Rio! You have to get to the base ships! It’s the only way!”

“Not now, Captain!” Rio hollered back. “We have bigger problems right now….”

“The base ships are our only problem.” Rhodes dragged himself upright, forced his eyes to focus, and took control of The Grid.

He didn’t know if his SAMs could override his will, but Rio didn’t intervene when Rhodes took over.

“All of you—follow me!” Rhodes ordered. “We’re going after the base ships! It’s the only way to draw their fire away from the Ravagers!”

Rhodes blasted away across Thaklia. He didn’t have to adjust his grid lines to any stranger or interesting shapes.

The base ships concentrated their firepower on the Ravagers in between laying down devastating shots on the city itself.

The Strikers relied on pure speed, pelted across town, and raced out the other side on a dead run for the base ships—the same base ships the Strikers just worked so hard to overcome to rescue the battalion.

“This is a bad idea,” Fisher murmured in Rhodes’s ear.

“How do you suggest we evacuate the planet with the Ravagers under bombardment?” Rhodes asked. “Those Ravagers are our only way out of here. Let’s go, Rio. Let’s do some damage.”

Rhodes didn’t wait for Rio to fly the ship or run the guns on his own. The cold, sick feeling in Rhodes’s middle narrowed his attention to a pinprick.

His mind switched gears. He didn’t have to fight for the Legion or the trapped platoons or for anything else.

He fought for survival. That was all. He had to get the hell off this planet and that meant destroying the base ships.

He didn’t even know if he had a weapon powerful enough to destroy them—and then he remembered.

The battalion destroyed base ships on Ohait. The battalion detonated base ships by firing into their undersides.

His mind took extra long to process every thought. Of course. That must be why the base ships stayed sitting on the ground during every campaign.

Their armored tops and sides protected them from any weapon the Legion could throw at them. The base ships only exposed their vulnerabilities when they launched.

The thought gave Rhodes a sick thrill. He could destroy these cocksuckers. That would put a dent in their campaign. Nothing else would.

“Follow me!” he called to the battalion.

“What are you going to do?” Fisher asked.

“I told you. I’m going to stop the base ships from assaulting the Ravagers. The Ravagers have to get off the planet.”

“What about the platoons?” Rhinehart asked.

Rhodes cast one backward glance at The Grid. Every platoon in Thaklia was pinned down.

“Taking out the base ships is the best way to help the platoons,” Rhodes replied. “The Ravagers won’t be able to evacuate any platoons if the ships can’t land. Let’s go. We need to get underneath the base ships and fire Vipers into them from below.”

“Below—how?” Thackery asked. “The base ships sit right on the ground.”

“Exactly. Copy me—and spread out—one Striker to a base ship. Then circle back and eliminate the others.”

End of Chapter 2.