Chapter 6

The control tower was still in a state but clean up had already begun by the time Greyman returned to it. Most of the consoles had been left intact due to the study nature and their distance from the windows. The Marshall wished to slump down on a nearby chair but he knew he had to look strong for everyone else that was in the room. Instead he walked over to the broken window to see a squadron of fighters coming into land at the wreaked airfield, they went in one by one on the least damaged stretch they could find. A group of five dropships came into land, four went to the airfield and one landed on the landing pad outside the main complex. Greyman looked on to see Captain Haunton and others of the brass walk out, he noticed they were a mix of Imperial and Federation. He mused on this for a second and thought the Federation must have been as shocked and as damaged as the Imperial forces. This thought was broken as a lump of debris came crashing into the atmosphere of the moon landing into a deep crater a few kilometres away. The dust cloud from this rose up and then fell gently back down. A soldier came behind the Marshall who felt the man's presence and turned around to face him, upon returning his salute the soldier spoke

"Ground Marshall, the brass are expecting you in the comms room sir" Greyman nodded and walked off towards the meeting.

Over in the utterly destroyed medical wing Sergeant Gharret was looking for his sister. Debris lay everywhere and the air carried a thick layer of dust which hung about and infected the lungs of anyone nearby. The man called out for his kin in a rough voice, his call was answered immediately from around the corner outside. He walked out briskly and around the corner there was a line of injured up against the wall heading down the long corridor. Clearly they had been brought here only to find the wing demolished by multiple explosions and a bomber which had crashed into it, the tail end still jutted out for all to see. Cassandra looked at her big brother, smiled and spoke merrily

"Have fun, I know I did?" Gharret frowned and gave off a harsh stare into her eyes before speaking

"Fun? Stop playing games"

"Eh whatever, how's things?" She said shrugging

"Look around, not going well, though at least we're not fighting the Federation anymore" Cassandra's first reply to this was stopped by another look from her brother, she then thought for a second before speaking

"Yeah ... What were we fighting?"

"The hell if I know" He said fumbling with his sidearm holster "How's your head?"

"I'll be fine, It's only a scratch"

"You're concussed and have minor bruising all across your ribs" The nearby medic had overheard them as he passed up the line checking on the injured. This provoked a scowl from the girl which the doctor completely ignored

"I'll be fine, just a few hours rest" In response to this Gharret prodded her ribs with the butt of his rifle softly which made her grimace and push it away

"Yeah you're staying right here, out of any combat until your wounds heal. You're bloody lucky, others died when the meteor came down. There's a soldier three down from you that's had his head pretty much split open by a piece of falling debris. You'll be up and moving in a few days" The medic explained while utterly blanking the scowls from his patient

"Hmm, I don't like staying still, but I guess the militia can do without me for a few days"

"What's left of the militia here, they were hit hard all over" Gharret thought aloud, the medic answered in a unrefined tone

"Basically there is no militia left, 79 per-cent casualties across the board I think, those up here are being rolled into the divisions, you, young lady will be going into the 3rd mechanised or the 12th armoured"

"79 per-cent! So the 34th is being disbanded?" Even the sergeant was shocked at this

"Yeah unless they suddenly get a wave of volunteers, that's doubtful though, you should see the colony, torn to pieces. Anyway I've got a huge list of tasks and most of my staff are missing, so you" he pointed at the girl "Stay put and rest" With that he walked away

The comms room was the most undamaged and the holographical display was still working though flickering a bit and with more of a green tint than normal. The room was roughly the size of a board room in a business and had a long oak table where the leaders now sat with the Ground Marshall standing at the top right corner of it. Standing next to him was a junior medic who was gingerly trying to clean the blood off his face and patch up the head and shoulder wound that the Marshall had only just realised. Admiral Hassan stood up and addressed the congregation of still angry and confused officers

"Right, we need to find out what these aliens wanted" Haunton voiced his disagreement

"With all due respect, we need to find out what damage has been caused and take an inventory of the forces left, we need a clean picture of what we have lost" There was a grumbling of agreement with this. The Admiral took a breath to contain his anger and moved on. The display in the centre of the table turned to a planet with the moon in orbit, the colony was marked as were to two fleets. All looked on at the display as it flickered. Captain Haunton spoke up and briefed the officers

"right we all know what happened roughly so I'll move quickly. The alien fleet emerged here after the initial landing craft emerged here" Markers appeared appropriately as he spoke "The ones that landed on the moon divided, half went for the airfield and half for the main base. The ones that attacked the airfield failed to destroy it, so they called in their bombers which had partial success and charged at the cannon not far away. After this was disabled they reinforced their comrades attacking the base"

"Seems they won here" One of the officers piped up, Haunton spoke a second before the Marshall could

"If they had won they'd be no base here, after an extended fight the aliens withdrew leaving the garrison with around 45 per-cent casualties. Now on the planet surface the force attacking Midgard was a lot larger. The 34th sustained massive casualties and as far as we know around 100,000 people have gone missing" There were gasps among a few. A Federation captain rose up

"How can 100,000 people go missing, buried under rubble?"

"No, the damage to the colony was extensive but no bodies have been recovered from the search so far, it's only been a matter of hours but 100,000 people is a third of the colony. Also while the colony was attacked on all fronts the residential sectors were stormed with the most force and quickly overrun. I believe that we need to assume that they were taken" Many more exclamations sounded from the officers. Hassan rose next and spoke out

"So they may have taken out people. Of course the sweep will have to be completed before any conclusions are made. While this is on-going we need to take an inventory of what forces we have left. As we speak a delegation from both Federation and Imperium are convening on Earth for talks about these events. Full communication is available to superiors so all officers are required to stay on this base" He gestured for both Haunton and Greyman to follow him and then departed leaving the men from both sides talking amongst themselves

The three men walked down a corridor towards the control tower, Hassan spoke out with little care for the two subordinates responses other than the facts they gave

"Greyman, what forces do you have left?"

"The 3rd is down to 800 men and 34th garrison here was 1500 men with 500 volunteers from this base. It's down to 420 men. We go hit heavy, I recommend combining to the two to reinforce the 3rd"

"You want the militia in the division?"

"To be honest sir, it's a company now I've been in effective command of a 1100 men since the colonel died on Earth, even then it was way understrength"

"Not the question I asked"

"Yes sir, I want the militia, they can be trained and have already proved they've got what it takes"

"Fine they'll die wherever they get put, take them. As for you Captain my sympathies on the loss of the Valhalla, I imagine it was a good ship" His words stung as the mockery cut deep into Haunton. The Admiral had always thought the Captain was a direct contender for an Admiral's position and had come perilously close to achieving that but with this loss there was no chance. Haunton stood strong against this and simply said nothing but walked on beside the two men.

"Anyway" The Admiral continued "Greyman get the base and your men sorted out and Haunton get the fleet lined up" Since it was pointless arguing to Hassan that both of those tasks were his responsibility especially the fleet the two men saluted and walked off.

By the end of the day the base had improved a lot and the shipyard was back up and functioning to repair the most heavily damaged vessels. The moons orbit was slower than standard 24-hours and so the day lasted 30-hours. Greyman looked out of the still broken control tower window as the light from the sun receded across the blasted craters. He looked up at the stars and thought on the events of the day, he found himself in a state of tranquillity as his gaze rested on the mass of twinkling lights that offered endless possibilities. Haunton moved silently up behind him and spoke in a peaceful tone

"Beautiful aren't they" Without opening his eyes Greyman replied

"You could easily get lost amongst them, I'd be happy"

"Me to, me to but you have a duty down here, maybe one day"

"That day is far away and uncertain"

"It's something to look forward to"

"I'm sorry about your ship"

"It's okay, it was only a piece of metal" Haunton sighed heavily though Greyman saw past this

"Not to you it wasn't, I know you, Valhalla meant everything" The Captain looked down shaking his head sorrowfully

"It was" He spoke then turned and walked away from his friend who looked across the plains in a melancholy wayGreyman snapped into gear and radioed the planet to roll what they had left of the 34th militia into a area to await what was left of the 3rd which would be transported down to the colony and the two groups combined. The marshall was about to join his official second in command Lieutenant Major Thorne on the planet he was called away to an urgent meeting in the comms room.

He rushed to the officers who started immediately as soon as he walked in. A Federation Intel officer spoke up

"We've received information that a large colony on the edge of known space of approximately a million has picked up a strange reading on the radar. The colony there acts as a growing population centre but also has the latest radar installation which, boosted by the planets unique atmosphere, is a listening post of massive range" His Imperial colleague butted in an continued "I've been given access to and have seen the schematics so I can confirm what has been said. This radar has detected a number of anomalies in the sector. The installation picks up thousands of anomalies every day but none move at this speed, on the condensed FTL patterned way" The Federation officers piped up to explain " Every ship or fleet travelling in their own way faster than light give off a certain signature which is detectable is the equipment is precise enough. So the number of ships in this cluster is unknown, however we have sent what little data we could collect from the aliens we've sent. Luckily due to the distance of ships when they were detected we could easily send the data and receive a reply in ample time. The match is that what way the aliens used to travel through large distances in space is being used by this cluster"