Battle Luna

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Well, what I’m hoping is two things,” she said, ticking off on her fingers. “One, our level of preparation will be a surprise to them. And two, Hamilton has something else up his sleeve that I hope scares the piss out of them.”

  “For a mayor of a small Moon town he’s a damned good strategist.” Meeks smiled even if somewhat somberly.

  “We’re lucky to have him.” Tami reached into her metal desk and pulled out a small bottle and two glasses. She made two quick pours and handed Meeks one of them. “Free Luna.”

  “Free Luna.” They tapped the glasses and swigged down the drinks.

  “We gonna be ready to move out in the next hour?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well then, I guess it’s time to go to war.” Tami wasn’t sure she could do it. She was going to have to send these eighty-seven kids into a meat grinder to face four companies of Earth troops. “You’re probably the only actual veteran I’ve got, Shawn. Any last-minute words of wisdom?”

  “There’s no wisdom that I know of. Just keep your head down and don’t get your ass shot off,” Meeks said grimly. “I guess just do your job. That’s the main thing. As long as our main focus is to get the job done, we’ll make it through.”

  “Do your job. Sounds about right.” Tami thought about what that job was. She had to draw the Ueys as deep into North Dome as she could so that Hamilton’s and Ray’s troops could flank and surround them. They were outnumbered and outgunned, but the advantage was that the Earthers would be thinking it was going to take them hours to get a company of troops across the fifty or so kilometers to North Dome. It was going to take about ten minutes at most. And all of her troops would be carrying the new Mama’s Express rifles, not paintball guns. And this was the Loonies’ home. She hoped all that would add up to something. But they’d still be outnumbered four to one, until Nate and Alton showed up. They just had to hold long enough for the plan to work.

  “David, are you sure this is finished?” Mayor Hamilton asked, looking at the rocket-nozzle-shaped container the Mimic had just printed out. There were five others on the floor that looked identical and five rocket body tubes and nose cones. The nozzles were about a half meter tall and across on the top but only about five centimeters across at the bottom. The boxes had a cardboard and rubberized-like material filling them and intimately bonded to the metal walls, sealing the top. The multiple pieces were threaded and clearly could be connected together to build a much larger device. The hope was that they wouldn’t be too complex to be put together on the fly without expert help.

  “They’re done, Mr. Mayor. All you have to do is light the fuse by pressing this button here,” David explained. “They’ll work.”

  “How did you know how to build these?” the mayor asked.

  “I just looked it up on the internet. Then Sarah and Jerry and I played around with it a bit until we got it to work right. Carla designed the trigger circuit,” David explained. “Sarah calculated the orbital mechanics and gave you the coordinates, right?”

  “Yes. I’ll place them myself,” Hamilton acknowledged. “And they don’t have to be guided or anything, right?”

  “They’re dumb rockets, Mr. Mayor. They’ll fly straight assuming we designed them correctly. The test rockets we flew in the tunnels worked fine,” David reassured him.

  “They have to work, They have to.”

  “They will. I hope.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, good luck, Mr. Mayor.” David held out a hand and stood up. Hamilton took it and shook it solidly while nodding and looking him in the eyes.

  “David, if it weren’t for you figuring out how to work this thing, the Earthers would own us by now. You know that, right?”

  “Took all of us, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Well, it’s my turn now.” He turned and gave a couple of orders to others in the Mimic room. Several volunteers rushed in to pick up the launch boxes. “Let’s move out through the back door. We’ll take three vehicles with the lights on and I want the thirty troops with me spread out, making our group look as big as we can. We’ll sling up as much of a dust trail as we can, too.”

  Hamilton slung a rifle on his back and made his way through the back door and toward the airlock. From there it was up the two-hundred-meter shaft to the garage and then westward across the old road toward Aldrinville and McMillis’s battalion of Earther mercs. He hoped that the Ueys’ eyes in the sky thought that his small band of troops heading to Aldrinville were all they’d managed to muster. What the Ueys didn’t know was that there were over three hundred rifle-toting volunteers in the dogleg tunnel waiting to pour into the West Dome and then across the tunnel to the North Dome on his command. And if Tami and Nate were ready, they might just have a full-up defense force ready to surprise the Hell out of the Ueys.

  The biggest concern was still the blockade. As long as the Moon was cut off from resupplies of certain materials, the UNE could eventually starve the colonies out. The damn Ueys could even do strategic strikes from low lunar orbit as they needed to keep the Loonies distressed. Alton knew that they could take back the domes they’d lost, but they couldn’t hold them forever as long as that blockade was there.

  At last count there were almost seventy space vehicles in multiple inclinations at about a hundred kilometers’ altitude. You couldn’t look up without seeing a damned UNE spaceship above. Alton thought of a comment that Jerry had made that led him down this path. Jerry had looked up and said, “You know, Mr. Mayor, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a damned Uey blockade ship.”

  “Too bad I can’t throw a rock that far,” Alton recalled saying to him.

  “The southern wall is breached, ma’am. We can infil at your order,” Master Gunny Sergeant Kelly Vors reported to Suarez over the command net channel. “Bravo Company is in place and ready. Charlie is a few minutes behind and they aren’t quite through the wall on the southeast yet.”

  “Tell them to hurry it up, Kelly. I want us inside in ten minutes!” Suarez ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Looking at the HUD on her visor she could see that Alpha and Delta were on the north side of the Dome and were already moving inside it. She had yet to hear if there was any fighting going on and there had not been any casualty reports either. Marissa was guessing that the Loonies were going to stay hidden until the very last minute and then pull some engineering trap with glue, or concrete, or pitfalls, or pressure bombs like they had been doing up to this point in the conflicts. All she could really do for now was wait until Charlie’s engineers cut through the dome and then the four-wave final attack on the Loonies could commence.

  “Lieutenant Thomas, pull your squad and walk with me,” Marissa called to the leader of a six-man forward recon unit.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Thomas, take your squad on ahead of Bravo. I want you to push as deep towards the city center as you can. If you see unfriendlies, engage, but don’t get yourself in a bind. What I want is for you to blaze us a trail to the center of the Loonie forces.”

  “Got it, ma’am.”

  “Go.”

  “Colonel, Charlie is through the dome wall. We can ingress on both sides now,” Vors reported.

  “Do it.”

  “Ueys are pouring in from all four corners of North Dome and are plodding through Main Street and Dish Boulevard like they own the city. For the most part all the civilians have been evacuated down to the tunnels and the alien rooms,” First Sergeant Meeks told Tamika. “There are enough of them in place now, ma’am. No better time.”

  “Main Street of North Dome here is about a kilometer from the West Dome tunnel. We need to pull them away from there so Hamilton’s men can egress and engage. Right here at the southern end of Dish Boulevard is where we hit. Let’s move now fast and quietly. As soon as we set up in the shops along Jansky Drive and Bright Road running north and south we hit ’em.”

  This was going to be an old-school, hold-the-line type of fight. As far as
she could tell, if they set up defensive lines along the two main streets and along the alleyways perpendicular, they could hold that little bit of town off from a frontal attack for a while. The Ueys had significantly larger numbers and would then try to flank them and they would be successful. That’s when it would be an all-out hand-to-hand retreating fight to the West Dome tunnel.

  “Meeks, send the order. Attack.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Private First Class Kevin Mallet of the South Burrow Squad of the North Dome militia volunteers didn’t like having to leave his visor on all the time. It made it hard to aim. But he also liked breathing and with the dome walls being breached by the damned Ueys he wasn’t sure if the air was good enough. Main Street was so far from the outer dome wall that he wasn’t sure it mattered, but one thing about living on the Moon was that you always had your suit on and ready in a time of crisis. PFC Mallet figured war counted as a time of crisis. He knew that General McMillis’s battalion was coming for them and he knew that the North Dome militia was only a few squads deep and certainly wouldn’t be able to hold the Ueys back. They were hopelessly outnumbered, but had been ordered directly from General Hamilton to hold the city.

  “Mallet, get your ass down!” Corporal Martha Xhi shouted at him just as several rounds poked holes in the wall above his head. “What the Hell are you doing? Shoot back!”

  “I count six of them there on Dish Boulevard just the other side of the coffee shop.” Kevin let loose with several rounds from the nine-millimeter rifle. “Where the Hell is Ames?”

  “There! On their left, about forty meters,” Xhi replied. “Give him some cover fire!”

  “Take that, you bastards! For Luna Eight!” Kevin continued to fire in bursts and then he ducked back down behind the cover of the concrete barricade at the end of the alleyway. The mayor had the barricades placed there years ago and they were there to close off that end of the Main Street and Dish Boulevard crossing from traffic. The area was a pedestrians-only crossing with a big fountain in the middle of the street. On any normal day in Aldrinville you’d see the fountain covered with the college kids there to work on the radio telescope and the occasional family picnicking around the fountain. But this was no typical day. The shops were all closed. There were no families about. And the barricades and the fountain had been repurposed for fortification in a firefight.

  “Xhi, this is Ames.”

  “Go, Staff Sergeant.”

  “We’ve got a forward recon team down here and they’re laid in pretty good,” Sergeant Ames started. “I need you and the rest of the squad to start pushing in to the south. I’m going to try and get close enough see if these new grenades work.”

  “Got it.” Corporal Xhi looked to her left and Kevin could tell she was about to tell him to do something he didn’t really want to do.

  He looked down the line and counted PFCs James and Ruez on the other side of the street fountain. He was on her right and farther down from there was Lieutenant Gray’s squad, but they looked to be pinned down by the forward recon team. It was going to be up to them to break things loose. Kevin managed to raise up and fire off three bursts of automatic fire before the barricade lit up in front of him with return fire.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Stay down, Kevin!” Martha bear-crawled behind the concrete street barricade until she was damned near crawling up his back. “Kevin, you see that doorway to the Ice-Cream Shoppe there? You and me are gonna make a run for it, then we’re gonna cover James and Ruez to follow us. Got it?”

  “Right now?” PFC Mallet asked. “You fucking kidding me? They’re hammering the shit out of us!”

  “If we stay here, we’re pinned down, Kevin. Being pinned down is never a good thing. We’ve got to move. Now!” She pushed Kevin hard from behind and it was enough to force him to bear crawl forward and then rise to his feet.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Kevin repeated to himself as he bounced across the four-lane street in the lunar gravity in about three bounces and losing his balance on the last one, causing him to plunge face-first in a screeching crash into the glass door of the Ice-Cream Shoppe. The door must’ve been bulletproof glass or polycarbonate because he bounced to a stop more worse for wear than the door.

  “Move it, Kevin!” Xhi was right behind him, almost stepping on his back as she burst through the doorway before him. Kevin bear-crawled up to his hands and feet and followed her. Several rounds splattered against the asphalt and the lunar concrete. The big glass window with the big red letters shattered and glass flew. “Back door!”

  Xhi stood up and grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him over the counter and through the kitchen area in the back. She landed into the back emergency exit door with her boot kicking it open. Kevin had enough of his wits about him to cover behind them with a sweep of his rifle. Quickly they cornered around the back and slipped to the next alleyway where they could see Jones and Ruez.

  “How they Hell are we gonna get them across the street?” Mallet asked the corporal. “They’re pinned down like the lieutenant’s squad.”

  “No, we’re going to hug this wall in a stack and take turns laying down fire. As the staff sergeant works his way down they’ll just have to make a run for it like we did,” Xhi explained. “Hopefully, between us, the staff sergeant, and Gray’s squad, this little recon force will be distracted enough for us to close in on them. Jones. Ruez. Get ready to bounce.

  “Okay, Staff Sergeant, now’s as good a time as any,” Xhi announced over the comm net. Then she looked back over her shoulder at Mallet. “Don’t shoot me in the ass, Kevin.

  “Right. Let’s go!” Suddenly, the world seemed to move in slow motion for PFC Kevin Mallet. Corporal Xhi dropped to a knee in front of him, firing full auto ahead of them. Kevin leaned out and fired a round or two over her head and then hugged back against the wall as a round caught Martha in the chest, penetrating through her suit and out the back, spraying blood on Kevin’s visor.

  “Shit, I’m hit!” Corporal Xhi shouted flailing, backward into Kevin. He managed to grab the handle on the back of her suit and slide her up against the wall.

  “Hang on, Martha!” Kevin yanked the instapatch from his thigh pocket and broke it in half to release the hardening agents. Then he slapped it against her chest. The bluish gel mixed with the red oozing from the hole in her suit until the flow stopped. He reached around behind her and felt for the exit wound but her suit self-seal layer had already filled it full of organic sealant.

  “Missed my heart or I’d be dead already,” she said with blood squirting out of the corners of her mouth. “But I’m out, Kevin. You’ve got to get the staff sergeant cover or he’s done too. Jones and Ruez will follow you if you go.”

  “Damnit.” Kevin wasn’t sure what to do. He had known Martha since grade school. He didn’t want to leave her there to die. “Martha, no.”

  “Kevin, it’s bigger than you and me! Now go! That’s an order, Private!”

  “Right.” Kevin tapped a transmit disk with a red cross on it and stuck it to Martha’s shoulder molle strap. “Hang in there, an evac should be here soon. Jones, Ruez, we’ve gotta go!”

  Kevin picked up Martha’s ammo bandolier and tossed it over his shoulder. It stuck to the molle webbing and Velcro there as it had been designed to. He leaned out around the corner but was quickly pushed back by a hail of gunfire.

  “Shit! This is a bad idea.” He looked at what he was carrying and decided there was no real way out down the street. The street was a gauntlet run headfirst into a shitstorm and he didn’t like his odds. And that gave him an idea. He looked up at the multicolored family-oriented businesses lining this side of the street. The buildings were mostly town-house types one connected to the other and were only one story tall. There were only a few that stuck up above the roof line with a second story. He reached in his belt and pulled out one of the new grenades and pulled the pin. “Here goes nothing.”

  He tossed the grenade to the top of the Ice-Cream Sh
oppe behind him and waited. The grenade exploded, sending debris flying in an arc across the street all the way to the other side of the fountain. A large piece of shrapnel flittered down and made a nice splash into the central fountain pool.

  Most of the roof of the little mom-and pop-business caved in and that was just what Kevin was hoping for. He slipped around the backside of the alleyway where he and Xhi had just come from and reentered the shop. There was a hole in the roof that he could see the top of the dome through. He took a leap up onto the ice-cream counter and then another and was on a trajectory up and through the hole in the roof and came to a landing at the edge of the building’s rooftop, almost falling over. Fortunately, one of the two-story buildings was between him and the Uey recon force so they had no idea what was going on.

  “This will work,” he said to himself as he started bouncing at top pace from rooftop to rooftop until he was only a few buildings from the Ueys. He could see that the staff sergeant was pinned down and looked to have been hit in the leg. Kevin slid to a stop prone on the edge of the last two-story building and steadied his rifle. He had perfect sniper view of the enemy recon team and with a light squeeze on his trigger he watched the red dot from the sight become a red mist where one of their heads had been. He shifted and caught a second one of them in the chest. And then the remaining of them trained their weapons at him.

  “Oh shit!” Kevin backpedaled for cover. Then like a flash the staff sergeant was on his feet and in the midst of the Ueys. He was firing and swinging the butt of his weapon like a madman. Jones and Ruez rushed the coffee shop that was making up most of the Ueys’ cover and in seconds the enemy recon team had been neutralized.

  Kevin looked to the west where the lieutenant’s squad was and they were moving toward the staff sergeant’s position. He checked his blue force tracker for the red-cross ambulance status and saw that there was a search team moving in on Xhi’s location at that very moment. Then something caught his eye farther north up Main Street.