A repurposed Fleet pinnace burrowed into the crevice of an ice asteroid fires its thrusters, catching an over-confident Trixilii destroyer unaware and piercing the ship’s modest shielding. A cluster of the avian-like creatures spill out from the ship’s wound, mangled and convulsing into the cold vacuum of space, and officers in the Scorian command bunker give out a low cheer of delight.

  That is nearly the sum of Scoria’s battle success in space. The Scorian ground batteries, half of them repurposed from the Fleet corvettes, are nearly impotent against the looming Bellitran Fleet, and there are too few to be effective against the purebred masses of Gor planetary assault ships. A few missiles do manage to reach their intended targets with the help of the colony’s CDF AI, imploding packed masses of Gor and Vorie with roars of high atmospheric detonations, but it is not nearly enough to matter.

  The Bellitran fleet doesn’t bother with a bombardment of the moon. Perhaps they know it will be useless against the colony’s shield network, for which so much of Scoria’s industry has been sacrificed; or perhaps they know about the adamite deposits which provide an extra carapace of protection for the defenders.

  Zheng thinks it equally likely that the Gor demand a fight before any of the colony’s defenders can be taken out of action.

  The huddled officers of the command bunker watch silently as the glittering dots from the Gor planetary assault ships disperse among the grey windswept darkness of Scoria, beyond the shield wall and the reach of the colony’s defenses. The paucity of Bellitran mechs or assault armor confirms that the Gor see Scoria as much as an entertaining test of battle-bravery as an actual challenge.

  It takes less than an hour for the Gor, bulky in their exoskeleton armor, to form up and reach the outer defenses of the colony, targeting two of the entrenched shield nodes. Zheng watches as minefields are cleared with typical Gorian suicidal bravery, their clinging Vorie flung upward as explosions ripple the grey ground.

  Then the Gor are at the defenses proper.

  The chatter in the bunker grows louder as Scorian CDF soldiers fall back in waves behind rear-guard auto-turrets, drawing the Gor into premeditated kill zones beyond the inevitable shield node breaches. White-hot lancers from the Sec-suits bubble through Gor armor and flesh, while CDF impact rounds blunt the Gor charge, and Zheng can hear the Gor grunts and Vorie screams even though the static of his command-channel audio link.

  Still, not all are fast enough in their withdrawal underground, and the first casualties are reported: tattooed thick-set miners and grim CDF soldiers having their torsoes shredded by Gorian beam weapons and Vorie swarms, augmented Sec-suits ripped apart by Gorian kinetics as they cover their comrades' retreats. Zheng watches a feed of a Gor throw down its weapon and engage a CDF sergeant in ritualistic hand-to-hand combat: the CDF soldier lodges her filament blade deep in the brute’s torso, but the Gor ignores the wound, tearing the woman’s armored head off with a casual twist and then flinging it upward in blood-splatted elation. Its Vorie, clinging to the Gor’s armor in their own almost comical little combat suits, scream to the sky in shrill bloodlust.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I should be out there,” Zheng seethes as he watches the tactical relay, his hands digging into the table of the holo-cast until they’re white.

  He feels Volkova’s glance, and her disapproval..

  “You’re where you belong,” she replies. She sighs, and then squeezes his shoulder with an iron grip, a rare display of something approaching affection. “This won’t end today, Major. You’ll get your chance. So we all will.”

  She’s right, of course.

  The miners go deep, as was always the plan, exploding their tunnels behind them. And the Gor come after them, the Bellitran ships circling impatiently overhead.

  What follows is nightmarish, even by the standards of galactic, interspecies warfare.

  The Gor shed their armor, coming down with ritualistic blades and flames, but they are taught a series of costly lessons in ambush tactics and mining tricks by the Scorian defenders. Tools made for adamite mining now slice through alien flesh, and while a thick-set Scorian is still no match in hand-to-hand combat for a Gor and its Vorie, they’re harder to kill than any humans the Gor have met before. The Gor seem surprised at their tenacity, and after a week of mounting losses, perhaps at some command from the ships overhead, they grudgingly re-don their armor.

  This warfare is something older, more primitive, Zheng thinks, after nearly a month of the tunnel fighting; something from the castle age of Terra’s mythos, or the city battles of old Europa’s ruinous past. Firefights explode in cramped spaces, blowing out unhelmeted eardrums; Vorie breach through the odd air-vent, explosive vests strapped to their little bodies. The CDF AI is half-killed when a Vorie breaches a secondary command bunker, implanting a purpose-made virus into the console and then detonating itself before anyone realizes what’s happening.

  From then on the Scorian Admin AI takes over the tactical advisory role, but the colonial Admin, a grey-haired man older than Zheng, becomes more unhinged the longer he’s continuously integrated with the AI. They’re both relieved of their duty when the AI begins recommending frontal assaults in the ancient Soviet tradition.

  By the second month there are only fifty thousand of the initial three-hundred thousand colonists left. No quarter is offered, and none is received. The command bunker, once an expanse of pristine order, is bloodstained and bleak. They can feel the vibrations now, as the Gor attempt to breach the lower levels, and more than a few families have begun to opt for a quick departure from the siege via the pills in their locked cabinets. Zheng gazes around the bunker and wonders why he and the others don’t join them. Is it pure stubborness? Some misguided feeling of honor, or duty?

  No, he thinks, chewing on a bitter methamphetamine stim-tab. It’s because he has a duty to those around him, and a love for them too. And because he still clings to some buried hope, insane as it may be, that help may still yet arrive.