Chapter Six

The hot Askaran sun beat down on the men and women of 467th Penal Battalion. Dressed in irregular uniforms and armed with stun rifles and grenades, the battalion was manning a hill on the forward defense line before the city of Valkevaal. It was the objective and duty of this expendable unit to blunt the Thuun offensive before it could strike the city in force.

Overhead, a pitched battle raged among the aircraft of both sides. In the distance, the mechanized schwerepunkt of the Thuun column drove hard to the city.

Suddenly, the whine of turbines filled the air around Hill 456. Three Thuun platoon carriers dropped from the violent sky and landed among the defenders. Immediately, 2nd Platoon, A Company began its desperate defense by trying to attack one of the troop carriers. The initial assault let by Platoon Leader K’Thaal was repulsed with heavy losses. With the immediate area secure, the carrier opened its bay doors and its passengers debarked in a violent fury.

The penal soldiers in their fixed positions were no match for the Thuun airmobile infantry and they began to retreat from their place in the line.

Kenmark had been knocked unconscious in the first assault on the troop carrier. It had been his first taste of organized war and he had been rendered hors de combat in the opening minute. It was an ignoble way to end a life and, when he regained consciousness in the opening moments of the battalion’s retreat, he was filled with an uncontrollable, spiteful rage.

Throwing his stun rifle away, Kenmark ransacked the stunned body of a nearby Thuun soldier. Now armed with killing weapons, Kenmark proceeded to attack the Thuun airmobile infantry from behind creating a swath of destruction. As enemy soldiers were getting killed by the tens, the 467th reversed their retreat and counterattacked. Taking a page from their comrade, they also looted the bodies of their fallen enemy for killing weapons and proceeded to destroy two of the three troop carriers before the survivor escaped.

Just as the 467th reoccupied the hill, the Thuun mechanized infantry arrived and unleashed a storm of laser fire, missiles and grenades upon the battered unit. In the hellish confrontation, the 467th ceased to exist as a cohesive organization, however Hill 456 never fell to the enemy that day, in spite of attacks by two full divisions. The Thuun forces retreated the following morning amidst reports of violent firefights behind their lines in the vicinity of Hill 456.

When the Allied officers toured the battleground around Hill 456 later that morning, they were shocked by the numbers of destroyed armored fighting vehicles and troop transports and the scores of dead littering the fields. Noone was alive, friend nor foe. As they looked toward the retreating Thuun forces in the distance, they saw one person walking back toward Hill 456. It was a bloody, wild-eyed, red-haired outworlder, dressed in a torn, irregular uniform and carrying a Thuun assault rifle. Recognizing that this survivor was a penal soldier, he was immobilized and stunned into senselessness for carrying a killing weapon.

It was a pattern that was to continue throughout the war and after.