A Midnight Sun

[GeneralTacticus]

Sparta, 2490

A shadowy figure slipped through the darkness around one of the outpost bases on Tyndareous, the second most populous planet in Sparta. The figure walked swiftly but nervously, frequently glancing around as if afarid of the darkness itself. Sparta knew him as Lieutenant Ridgewell, but to himself and his friends he was Major Atreus, leader of all the members of the Leakdaemon Cadre on Tyndareous.

He glanced around nervously again. For those members that that remained in Spartan society, this was the greatest price. The endless secrecy, the fear that they knew who you were. The alternative was to simply disappear, to go to one of the Cadre boltholes. But this had it's own risks. The Spartans had caught on long ago and anyone who simply vanished was likely to be declared part of the Cadre. If they were ever found, they were shown no mercy.

Atreus stiffened suddenly as he heard a sound from his commlink. He breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the code sequence it was receiving. He strode on much more quickly and without any more apparent fear. Within a few minutes he had arrived at his destination. The hidden entrance to one of the Cadre's many command posts on this world opened as he entered the code. Inside, a guard had a weapon pointed at him and kept it aimed to kill until he could see who it was. The man's face was rigid with fear. Anyone who took part in direct Cadre operations wore this expression almost permanently.

"Major, sir," the guard said, "glad you're here. You're meeting in room number 49."
"Thank you, soldier."

He strode down the corridors, instinctively picking the right way - left turn, straight on, left turn, down. All the boltholes, to a greater or lesser extent, had been built this way to confuse intruders. At last the Major arrived at room 49 and entered. Eleven other people were seated at the table. All had their faces obscured by their helmets. No-one in the Cadre knew anything but the names of anyone but their friends, to prevent them from giving away their officers. Instead, they could recognize them by other means, which were different for almost every member.
"Major." one of the people seated at the table said, "Sit down. Leonidas is here in person."
On of the others at the table nodded and Atreus recognized the man's authority. He sat down and Leonidas stood.

"Members of the Cadre here today," Leonidas began, "I have come to lay plans relating to a very serious matter. As you know, some time ago I ordered you to begin constructing an underground base about 200 kilometers north-east of here. Not just a blthole, a complete base including production facilities and some research labs. However, we have just been told be some of our informers that the Spartans are begining work on a sensor array in the jungle nearby, among other places. The sensors are arranged in a square grid pattern extending more than a thousand kilometers with a point near our base site at the center. We need not worry much for our safety here, though we shall have to re-locate from and employ the typical procedure."

The other Cadre leaders absorbed this in silence for a moment. 'Typical procedure' as Leonidas had called it involved setting a huge array of booby traps throughout the structure, though these could be de-activated by a code.

Leonidas went on. "However, the same cannot be said of the this base. It's construction is too far advanced to stop. Yet at the same time it cannot be concealed from the sensors. Even the best technology in Sparta cannot do that. Therefore, we muat prevent the construction of the arrays."

"Easier said than done." replied a voice from the far end of the table. "If we attack the arrays, Santiago will just deploy force against us. For every defeat we inflict upon that force, she will increase it. We will find ourselves overwhelmed very quickly. I say we abandon the place, dismantle what we can, and leave. We can always build another base."

"Captain," Another of Cadre leaders said, his patience clearly being strained, "the point Leonidas just made is that we can't 'just build another base'. We expended huge amounts of resources building what now can't be dismantled. Our only option is to fight back. And I know that Santiago won't just give up, but if we can make the going hard enough, she will stop. There is no reason why she would throw away vast resources just to build some sensor arrays in the middle of a jungle. Guerilla warfare can be made very difficult, but never impossible. We've proved that before and we'll have to prove it again."

No-one had a response to this. Leonidas looked at each in turn, then nodded and gave his final orders: "Prepare your group leaders for offensive operations beginning as of dawn in two days time. Begin temporarily evacuating here. Leave no evidence behind, but keep the place functional incase we need to come back here. Dismissed."

[GeneralTacticus]

Two days later

Major Atreus examined the troops surrounding him. His immediate subordinates, Captains Hengest and Vishkin, walked up and nodded to him. "We're all set sir." announced Hengest, "Dawn isn't for another hour, but we should probably start moving out now. We've received signals that most of the others are moving too."
"Then we'll go," replied Atreus, "Move."


Spartan Lieutenant J. Masters walked confidently through the main jungle path toward the site of the planned sensor array. He was confident that nothing would go wrong, as he had more than 100 soldiers with him here and when the so-called 'Laekdaemon Cadre' attacked he could call in similar numbers from every other group leader and more than a thousand in reserve Outside the area. His orders made it clear that the Cadre would attack, as confirmed by a 'classified source', and that this was a matter of beating them when they did.

His commlink beleeped, and when he glanced down it was indicating that the planned site was 24 metres to the right, meaning that they would ahve to cut down quite some undergrowth. He held up a hand and pulled out the flame gun they carried for this. The other members of his team did the same and then turned them on the jungle.
Masters broke a smile as he felt the gun go hot in his hand and saw the foliage shrivelling away from the heat. He and the others stepped forward to burn further into the jungle. After burning in for 30 to 40 metres he shut the flamer off and the other troops shortly did too. A few smakk fires still crackled but he ignored them. The rest of the group came forward with the components for the sensor array and began setting them up.

The assembly of the array had not progressed past setting up the base when the Cadre struck. The firstindication of an attack was a hail of particle impact projectiles filling the air from across the trail. At least half a dozen Spartans were cut down at once and several more were wounded. The rest of the group grabbed their weapons and began firing them back. The Spartans saw movment and then the Cadre soldiers began emerging into the open, still firing. He saw his friend Seargent Marx hurled back through the air after taking a shot through the head, before a flame grenade engulfed two more Spartans. Cadre men were falling too, but they had the albeit fleeting advantage of syrprise and were pressing it for all they were worth. More flame grenades flew through the air, one of them striking the base of the array and scorching it badly. Another one came within a metre of wrecking the remaining equipment stacked up nearby.

Masters hurled himself down and sideways as a blaze of fire came his way, and gunned down two of the attackers before he saw a brace of grenades coming his way. He tried to dodge but wasn't quite fast enough, and the last thing he felt before the world went black was an excruciating burning all over his body. As he hit the ground agin he dimly heard himself screaming.


Captain Hengest cursed when he saw one of the Spartans take down two of his men in a single burst and hurled two grenades in quick succession. The Spartans had been slightly outnumbered when the attack began, and that advantage had increased as many of them were killed, but not all his men were out of the jungle yet. Still, most were, and he hoped this would give them the upper hand. The Spartans had begun hurling grenades back at the Cadre, and the jungle was now filled with the sound of explosions, crackling flames and screams.

Seeing an opening in the Spartan hail of fire Private Ollivero threw himself flat and opened fire on the Spartan sensor equipment. He was able to get off about half a dozen shots and wrecked most of it, before the Spartans started shooting at him. He barely managed to roll out of the way of a relentless stream of fire and jump to his feet. He shot one of his assailants in the arm and another through the stomach before another one got him in the legs. He collapsed to the ground and frantically tried to roll away. He would probably have died if someone else hadn't shot that Spartan first. He was able to crawl back across the trail into the jungle and then examined his legs. His right leg was shot away above the knee, but his left one only had a splintered shinbone. Ignoring the pain, he began shooting again killed another Spartan. Bey theis time there very few of the enemy left, but then he heard his commlink bleeping out the Spartan distress signal. They had alerted the Spartan reserves that they were under attack, 5 minutes after it had begun. As he began to pass out from shock and blood loss, he saw the last Spartans fall beneath an impact round.

Hengest looked around saw that a few of the Spartan wounded were still rolling on the ground. The Cadre troops dropped stun grenades to knock them out before tying them up in organic restraints. The other Cadre troops were looking around for their own dead and wounded. Within a few minutes everyone had been accounted for. He now strode over to the remains of the sensor equipment and gestured for the others to pick it up. There might be some use for what was left.

[GeneralTacticus]

Elsewhere in the jungle things had not gone so well. Lieutant Helen's group had been late moving out and was only just preparing to attack when the distress signal went out. When they did, their attack had very little surprise value. The fight quickly degenerated into a bloodbath, and the Spartans were winning.
Helen threw herself behind a tree to avoid a blast from a Spartan rocket launcher and killed the one that did it, but seconds later another rocket exploded in front of her and tossed her back into the jungle like a broken toy. Her body was shattered beyond recognition.
Seargent Titus saw his Lieutenant die and knew that this battle was lost. "RETREAT!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, as he hurled flame grenades into the half-finished sensor array. "RETREAT!"
The rest of the troops heeded his orders and broke off into the jungle behind them. The Spartans were too dazed by the sudden battle and it's ferocity to pursue, but their leader alerted the Spartan reserves that the Cadre were here.

Spartan Major Dienkes, commander of the Spartan reserve forces, examined the current situation on his projector screen and growled when he saw the number of positions reported overrun. Less than half the sensor positions remained and they had all taken heavy casualties. "Tell the main garrison I need more men," he snapped to his adjutant Natalaya, who nodded and relpied "Yes sir."
She walked to the commlink at the wall and opened a channel to the main garrison command. "Major Dienkes has instructed me to request more troops." she said flatly, "we have lost too many men to Cadre attacks."
"Tell the Major that we can spare about another two thousand." he replied, "I hope that will be enough." The screen went dead.
"Sir, the commander says he can spare another two thousand."
"That should be enough, Natalaya."

Seargent Mola was running down the path back to one of their rendevous points with about a dozen more men when he heard gunfire. One of the others was suddenly flung violently through the air and into a tree, with half his head missing. The rest pulled out their weapons and fired a few shots into the trees, but saw nothing. Then the Spartans launched their full attack. At least thirty of them emerged from the jungle firing impact rifles. The Cadre troops greeted them with a volley of their own that killed too outright and sent several others down wounded.
"Back to the trees!" someone shouted. As one they all threw themselves into the jungle and started firing from cover. The Spartans did the same and now they were firing almost blind.
Private Titus hurled a pair of flame grenades across the path and the twin detonations lit up the Spartan positions. The ensuing hail of impact fire killed three Spartans while the grenades killed another. They kept shooting but Spartan fire got more accurate as well and killed two more of Cadre. At that point the whole line pulled out grenades and pitched them across the path, setting several plants on fire and killing at least a dozen Spartans. The enemy responded in kind and all hell broke loose. The Cadre threw one last volley of grenades and then fled, dodging through the trees and trying to keep together. Only four remained. Mola looked up and swore as he saw a dark shape go past above. "Needlejet!" he half shouted, "Take cover!"
As he had expected, the sleeek craft circled once before beginning to attack. A wave of inceniaries crashed down into the jungle and set it all on fire. In a last act of desperation the four survivors began firing their rifles at it. In what seemed like a miracle one of the impact projectiles struck an engine and the jet caught fire. With the jungle burning around them they began running again.
They had not gone a hundred metres when Spartan jump troops began dropping from the sky. They opened fire and got two, but that was the last thing they managed before the Spartans mowed them down.

Dienkes smiled as reports of new successes started coming in. Though one of the needlejets that had come across had been shot down, his jumo troops were cutting off the retreating Cadre forces and were proving more than a match for them. The only fly in the ointment had been the loss of almost a hundred troops when they were caught been two enemy groups and massacred.

[GeneralTacticus]

As Major Atreus reached the designated retreat area, he opened up a commlink channel toLeonidas, as everyone had been instructed to do.

"How many?" asked the voice from the link.

"Major Atreus here, we got five wounded prisoners and around a hunded enemy dead. 52 of our own ded and 17 wounded."

"That brings the total body count to 420 of our own dead and 384 wounded, 512 enemy dead and 47 prisoners."

"Sounds like we hurt them."

"We did, but they hurt us too. We didn't expect them to be this well-prepared. However, we have captured much more sensor equipment thyan we planned for. Order your troops to head for the base. We'll set up an array of our own there and defend it when the Spartans come."

"Yes sir."

"Alright soldiers!" he barked as he turned around. "We are now heading for the new base. Bring the prisoners with us."

They all nodded and began moving toward the Cadre's new base.

They were within a kilometer of relative safety when they, as many other Cadre groups had been, were ambushed. Spartan troops burst from the jungle all around them and opened fire. The immediate reaction of the whole group was to hurl themselves away from each other and down across the ground, out of the line of fire. As they came to their feet they returned the favour with equal ferocity. Atreus had the sense to broadcast a distress call to Cadre Command, and hoped they would send troops to help him.

The two sides broke apart as the fighting continued, speading out into the jungle but still firing. The Cadre forces noted that there seemed a steady stream of new Spartan squads arriving from elsewhere, and knew that at this rate they would be overwhelmed. Still, that did not trouble them much: they would fight until they died, and take as many of the enemy with them as they could. And as the odds mounted, the actions of the Cadre troops became even more desperate. Several times, as Spartans found groups of two or three men at a time and mowed them down, anyone who survived the initial volley hurled themselves into the midst of the Spartans and detonated grenades, ammunition and anything explosive they had. The Spartans lost dozens of soldiers to these suicide attacks.

Privates Marcos and Dmitri let off yet another long burst of impact fire into the jungle and succeeded in killing a Spartan. They continued to run, trying to get to the base on their own. Suddenly a full squad of Spartans burst from the jungle and opened up. Marcos died instantly but Dmitiri dodged out of the way and came to his feet looking down the barrel of a dozen enemy rifles.

"Surrender or die." growled one of them. He raised his hands they surrounded him, taking his weapon.
"No mercy." he whispered as they did so, quoting the first part of the Cadre motto. At that moment his fist flashed down to the last of his grenades and struck the detonator switch. He and the entire squad vanished in a blaze of fire.

In spite of all these efforts, the fighting only became easier for the Spartans as it went on.


That ended when the reinforcements arrived.

More than two hundred Cadre troops in a coordinated formation burst into the battle and mowed down every Spartan in sight. The Spartan troops, broken into individual squads, were easy pray and many did not even realise the scales had tipped until they came under fire. The smallest grouping of the reinforcement troops was 25; the Spartan squads contained only a dozen men each.


Major Atreus stared in shock as he saw his attackers vanish under a storm of fire emerging from the jungle. Dozens of men, wearing the Cadre's fighting uniform, sprinting through the jungle with one obvious purpose:

Kill.

Atreus saw the leader of the group run close by, wearing the small but recognizable symbol of leadership. This was no-one he had ever met or heard about.

"Who are you?" he asked. The leader's face was hidden, of course, as were those of all the Cadre forces. He turned his masked face to look into Atreus's.

[GeneralTacticus]

"I am Colonel Menelaus." the mysterious leader said. "I am one of the advisors to Leonidas and I am in command of defending the base."

"I have never heard of you before."

"Few in the Cadre have, currently. But this is not the to time for talk. This is the time for war."

"Of course. And I thank you for your timely arrival."

'Menelaus' nodded and then sprinted off to rejoin to rejoin his troops, Atreus following. Th fight was almost over now. The Spartans had been shattered by the Cadre counter attack and most of those who remained were unconcious, with Cadre troops tying them up. Those Spartans still alive and able to walk had fled.

"Time to withdraw." announced Menelaus. Most of the remaining Cadre troops were those brought in by Menelaus. They had won here, but Major Atreus's men had paid a brutal price for it. Out of 92 that had been alive when they were ambushed, only eleven now survived.

"Now, Major Atreus." Menelaus went on, "where were we?"

"You were saying that few members of the Cadre had heard of you."

"Yes, few have. The reason for that, however, I cannot reveal. It is secret. I doubt you will ever find out. So don't bother worrying about it."

"Very well, Colonel."

The now very bloodied Cadre troops trickled back to the base with more than a hundred new Cadre dead and 25 wounded, along with 9 enemy prisoners.

Leonidas was aiting for them inside.

"How many losses?" he asked.

"104 of our own dead, 25 wounded. 9 enemy prisoners, somewhere in the region of six hundred dead Spartans."

"Well one thing's for sure about this: Santiago will have a fit."

"What's the bet she smashes Sparta Command down with her bare hands after this?"

There was some laughter at this, but then the atmosphere got more serious. Leonidas checked the numbers on his notepad than said, "Well that brings the body count to 524 of our men dead, and 409 wounded. The enemy has lost over eleven hundred dead and 63 wounded."

"Santiago is going to have a fit for sure. I think think she may decide to crush us here as a matter of personal honour." commented one of the other officers.

Leonidas sighed and gestured for the others to follow him. They walked down two corridors and then took a lift down an indeterminate distance. Finally the lift stopped and they found themselves inside an armoured chamber.

"This is the new conference chamber." Leonidas announced. "It is more than 700 metres underground and is heavily armoured."

The group took seats around the table in the centre of the room and and Menelaus stood.

"My name," he said, "is not for those sitting here to know. Those who need to know, already do. The rest may address me as Colonel 'Priam'. As you all know, the surprising success of our operations here has led to a change in plans. We will be fortifying this base heavily and will defend it against any attack. It is my hope, and that of Leonidas, that we can establish ourselves as an independant faction here, and defeat Spartan repression. Perhaps one day, we may also overthrow the whole of Sparta, as was our original agenda."

The others at the table nodded.

"Seems a lot for us to accomplish just from one base though." grumbled Captain Hengest, "and it's a big risk to take. If we concentrate everything here, if the Spartans crack our defences they've won. We've survived up until now because our organiztion isn't centralized enough to be easily destroyed."

Leonidas responded this time. "Captain Hengest, this plan does not call for the Cadre to be totally centralised here. It calls for this base to become the Cadre HQ, yes, but we will maintain, and in fact expand, our network of command posts and boltholes throughout Sparta. If this base falls, it will be a heavy blow, but it will not destroy us."

"Very well sir. I misunderstood."

Leonidas looked around, then spoke again. "Now that that is out of the way, we must move on. We have inflicted heavy casualties on the Spartans and captured most of the sensor equipment, but not all. We now need to despatch fresh troops to clear the jungle of Spartans and eliminate the remaining sensor equipment. We have set up the captured sensors and have determined that we greatly outnumber the remaining Spartans."

"Sir, by the time our forces reached the surviving sensor arrays, they would have them set up and would detect us coming. We would lose the element of surprise." one of the other Cadre members pointed out.

"I've taken that into account... Lieutenant." Leonidas replied, peering over at the rank badge of the questioner. "We have jamming equipment here, enough to scramble the Spartan sensors. They will, of course, know that something is up, but they won't know what it is and won't know how to counter it."

"But wouldn't that screw up our own sensors too?" Atreus asked.

"Of course it will, but that's a chance we have to take. I believe that is all. Collect our fresh troops and prepare them to move in an hour. In the meantime, keep the Spartans under observation. They know we have something here, that is unavoidable. Our safety now depends on our ability to defend ourselves. Dismissed."


* * * * * * * *


As Leonidas had predicted, on hearing the news of this disaster Colonel Corazon Santiago was having a fit. Although she had managed to stop herself from smashing the commlink that she had heard the news from or ordering the summary exceution of Major Dienkes for, this but she was now repeatedly smashing the training room dummy against the wall. It finally fell apart, and she began mechanically pounding against the wall, trying to vent her anger on the cold metal structure of her headquarters.
After about an hour she calmed down somewhat and sent a message to Major Dienkes, ordering him to use everything he had to destroy the Cadre forces in that jungle.

[GeneralTacticus]

Brigadier General Polynikes, commander of the 4th Spartan Garrison Division was somewhat surprised when his orders came through. He had not expected the forseeable future to be anything out of the usual routine of patrol duty, training and defence against raids by those damnable Cadre rebels. Instead, he was now being told to deploy his entire division - ten thousand troops - into a jungle on the other side of the planet to take down a group of insurgents.

Clearly they've really annoyed someone higher up, he mused, This has got to be the biggest anti-rebel deployment ever, especially if they bring in other troops too...

He then cut off any further thought as he forwarded the orders to his officers.

Two hours later he stepped into his military transport, along with his command staff. The rest of his division was embarking around him, except for the 3rd and 4th brigades, which used heavy armour and would be travelling by magtube to a Spartan base near their objective.

"Everyone's ready to go, sir." his adjudant told him. He nodded.

"Tell them to start moving."