Free War Against the White Knights by Tim C. Taylor

he feel guilty?
    He set the bulkhead screens to display pictures of Xin and Tremayne.
    If she hadn’t pushed him away then it would have been Tremayne whose embrace he would seek after the battle. No, not Tremayne, Springer. But Springer was dead.
    “Do you still love Springer?”
    Xin had come right out and asked him that when he’d insisted the ambassador to the Khallenes brought a mudsucker team with her to work their cyber magic on the front line.
    “Yes,” he’d replied. “But Springer’s dead. Deputy Ambassador Tremayne is like a cancerous sore that drains the life from me whenever she comes within ten light years. I am sure she feels the exact same way.”
    Xin had accepted the truth of his words, but had held him for a long while in a warning glare.
    ‘ It’s time ,’ announced Barney, wiping the pictures from the bulkhead and replacing them with a near real-time update on the battle’s progress.
    ——
    The enemy fleet that had taken Tallerman was long gone. Analysts confirmed that they had been Hardits, part of a pre-emptive strike that sought to destroy Legion forces in the field but not to conquer and invade. That task had been left to their New Empire allies.
    The liberating Legion fleet under McEwan’s command had swept away the modest Imperial naval forces with ease, but then came the classic invader’s dilemma. The Imperial defenders had yielded void space to the Legion, but Tallerman-3 was strongly defended by orbital defense platforms, some in fixed positions and others fast-deployable from the ground. There were enough bombs secreted in, above, and under the surface of the planet to transform it to a lifeless hell for millions of years.
    The mining world of Tallerman-4 had its own apocalypse bombs, but with the planet lifeless anyway, they had been fewer in number and lower yield. They had been disarmed by a stealthed Legion commando raid while it had been on the far side of the sun from the jungle world.
    Now the third planet with its faster orbit around the sun had caught up with the fourth planet. With the two planets at their closest approach, nervous defenders would have their fingers on the nuclear trigger.
    Go on , the imperials seemed to be saying, dare us to press the button. Make a move on us and everyone on the planet will die.
    Would they do it? If Tremayne’s cyber-ops team followed Arun’s plan then the answer wouldn’t matter. Get this wrong and not only would the Legion lose the infrastructure needed to supply his military with the raw materials they needed, but billions of the Tallermanians would die.
    The bulkhead screens showed pinpricks of light erupt over the airless surface of Tallerman-3 as three divisions of dropship infantry burst from hidden underground silos and began to close the distance between the two planets.
    Dropships were normally launched from orbit. To cross the interplanetary distance, half the troop-carrying capacity had been replaced with auxiliary fuel tanks. But there were still enough Legionaries to establish beachheads for the second wave of transports to reinforce and break out.
    All the defenders’ eyes would be on the armada of dropships. The enemy launched orbital defense pods from high-altitude aircraft, really little more than gun drones attached to balloons that could reach the stratosphere and beyond. For the moment, the defenders were confident they could fend off the wave of dropships. There were another twenty minutes until these attackers would reach Tallerman-3’s atmosphere. Plenty of time. And the Legion’s naval forces were keeping station several light minutes away. No need for the defenders to panic or make any hasty decisions.
    Their commanders would be wondering why such a weak initial force had been dispatched. Were the Legion wearing down their defenses? Probing? Was it a diversion?
    Anyone who guessed at diversion would win the prize, but it wouldn’t help them unless they also knew where their attention was being