Frozen Fire

by C H Gideon

  “Preacher acknowledges weapons hot on three remaining Purgatories,” Styles reported.

  Sure enough, two seconds after the last Jemmin vanished, the tactical board lit up with a hundred and fifty-six inbound missile signatures. Jenkins’ people returned fire with deadly precision, targeting each of the seven points of origin with artillery and missile strikes while their anti-missile systems reached out to scrape the sky clear of inbound ordnance.

  Preacher sent a Purgatory missile streaking off at a target as soon as it was visually-confirmed by one of the roving Owl drones. Another went off in the opposite direction even before Roy’s board confirmed the target’s location. The second was soon followed by the third, and last, Purgatory missile in Jenkins’ arsenal.

  All three of the incendiary devices were intercepted by last-second laser fire, but only one of them was destroyed outright while the other two slammed home on their targets.

  Raging domes of fire erupted, and each of those hellish fireballs revealed what appeared to be a Jemmin Specter-class platform.

  Elvira, out on patrol to the west, was the first to engage an exposed Specter with her fifteens. HE shells exploded, one a near-miss and the other a direct hit on the Jemmin vehicle. Exploding in a primally-satisfying shower of ceramic debris, the briefly-exposed Jemmin Specter was annihilated by Elvira’s textbook-precise fire.

  The second Specter was likewise taken down by artillery fire from Generally on patrol to the south, and soon the guns fell silent as the Jemmin disengaged completely.

  For the moment.

  “Get General Akinouye on the horn,” Jenkins commanded.

  Styles made to obey but soon reported with a look of unmasked concern. “Colonel…the Bonhoeffer’s currently engaged with the Jemmin warship in low orbit.”

  Jenkins set his jaw before barking, “Have the Sam Kolt acquire target lock and order Preacher to prep her last two nukes for low-orbital fire solution. Now!”

  “Get those racks back to the magazines,” Podsy shouted as the Bonhoeffer lurched beneath his forklift. “If that ordnance goes, it’ll blow half the deck!”

  “It’s too late for that!” Chief Rimmer shouted as grease-monkeys worked frantically to secure the pallets and racks of munitions which, just a few minutes earlier, had been staged for loading into the next wave of drop-cans. “Shove all this loose ordnance into Can Three and load it in the tube!”

  Podsy nodded, knowing it was probably the right call even though it wasn’t the one he would have made. He rolled over to a rack of eight mid-range missiles, picked it up, and drove toward Can Three while others worked to secure the already-loaded supplies. “Forget about the perishables.” Podsy waved off a pair of crewmen working to secure pallets of foodstuffs. “Our people aren’t getting this can!”

  Looks of comprehension came over their faces, and they backed carefully away as Podsy drove the fully-loaded rack of missiles toward the open back.

  The Bonhoeffer lurched again, nearly causing the rack of missiles to slip off the front of the lift’s forks, but Podsy managed to keep it from falling by dropping it to the deck and letting it self-right. Breathing a sigh of relief at avoiding catastrophe, he was just about to call out for help when one of the grease-monkeys from Second Shift ran past the forklift and gestured hurriedly for Podsy to slide the rack into place.

  Podsy did so, and the crewman locked the rack down with the quartet of manual clamps before hopping onto the forks and riding the lift back out.

  “Good work,” Podsy congratulated as another forklift ran past him bearing four of the extremely valuable Purgatory LRMs. He wanted to tell the lift’s driver not to throw them in the can since Can Three was about to be sent into the void—hopefully to be retrieved at some later date—but he knew that securing the drop-deck was more important than salvaging half of their remaining Purgatory supply.

  “Go! Go! Go!” he urged as the lift driver slowed, apparently sensing Podsy’s reticence. The driver sped off for the can, into which he and his lift’s attached grease-monkey moved to load the Purgatory missiles.

  Soon the can was filled, and the rest of the deck had been likewise cleared of live ordnance.

  “All right,” Rimmer barked, clapping his hands emphatically, “everyone off the deck. Move! Move! Mov—”

  His words were cut short when a deafening roar filled the deck. A bright-red beam of light stabbed through the outer hull, tearing into two nearly-empty cans. Four crewmen locking those down were incinerated, and the beam carved deep into the heavily-armored secondary hull that protected the Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s keel: the innermost segment of the ship which contained fuel stores, reactors, drive systems, and main processors.

  The powerful beam cut through two full meters of armor but failed to pierce the rest as the Bonhoeffer rolled its damaged flank away.

  And when the beam disappeared, the air in the drop-deck began to roar out through the five-meter-long rent in the outer hull.

  Podsy’s earpiece was barely able to convey Rimmer’s voice over the howling gases as they vented into space. “Everyone to the control room!” the deck chief yelled, but thankfully none of the crew needed to be told. Podsy drove his forklift over to the windowed control room’s main door, reaching it before half of his crew. He unbelted himself as the roar of escaping air steadily began to die down in its intensity, which meant that the breathable gases were nearly gone from the compartment.

  He tried to lunge for the door but fell after failing to achieve a firm grip on the forklift’s doorjamb. His head struck the deck, and all he could see were stars until he dimly became aware that he could no longer hear the roaring gases. This is it, he thought sourly. Dying of asphyxiation on a drop-deck…not the blaze of glory I hoped for...

  He reached out, hoping to find something to grip and use to haul himself toward the door. But instead of a workbench leg or even the forklift’s tire, all his hands managed to grasp were soft, round bags of some kind.

  Lubricant pouches? he wondered, not remembering seeing any of those on the Bonhoeffer’s drop-deck.

  It took him several more seconds to realize he was already inside the control room, and that the “lubricant pouches” were, in fact, the mammary glands of the same grease-monkey who had locked down the missiles in Can Three.

  She looked down at him with something between annoyance and amusement as she said, “I’m glad you’re all right, but you won’t be if you don’t get your mitts off me.”

  He hastily withdrew his hands and cracked a weak grin. “Sorry…but if it’s any consolation, you’re not my type.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she grunted, and Podsy felt a firm hand grip his shoulder.

  He looked up to see Chief Rimmer looking down at him approvingly.

  “How many did we lose?” Podsy asked.

  “Eight,” Rimmer replied grimly, and through the control room’s main window, Podsy saw a flash of light from the void beyond the gash in the hull.

  He blinked hard enough to clear the cobwebs and re-focused on the hole just in time to see the sleek, curved hull of the Jemmin warship erupt in a series of rapid explosions that swept it from stem to stern. The Bonhoeffer was laying into the damaged enemy with missile after missile, tearing massive wounds in the advanced warship’s hull.

  After at least forty distinct impacts, those relatively minor explosions were dwarfed by a blinding flash of light that caused everyone in the control room to reflexively shield their eyes. When they turned their attention back to the hole, the Bonhoeffer had rolled to an orientation that would not permit them to see the Jemmin warship.

  But if Podsy knew anything about anything, the Jemmin warship had either gone reactor-critical or been struck by a nuke.

  Either way, it was off the board. Permanently.

  “Thanks for the assist, Colonel,” General Akinouye greeted after the Jemmin warship had been destroyed, finished by the last of Preacher’s nukes. “We couldn’t get any of our fusion torpedoes out of their launchers.”
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  “How’s the Bonhoeffer, General?” Jenkins asked intently.

  “Our forward armor is down to twenty percent, and we took severe damage to our main propulsion, port drop-deck, and power systems,” Akinouye replied. “We’re maintaining support posture, but I’m going to be frank. If the Jemmin return with even one more warship like that one, we’ll have no choice but to withdraw. I’m of a mind to scrub this mission right now, Colonel.”

  “I advise against that, General,” Jenkins said firmly. “I think we’re on to something big down here, and it’s obvious that the Jemmin don’t want us to find out what it is. And without that Jemmin warship up there, we should be able to coordinate between the Bonhoeffer’s sensors and our surface-based systems to locate and neutralize the Jemmin in future engagements. In my opinion, we’ve come too far to pull out now, General.”

  Akinouye leaned toward the pickup, causing his image to loom on the display, “Colonel Jenkins, we’ve already crossed several lines I hadn’t thought we would come within sight of, let alone brush up against. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this situation is nearly out of control. This might be our last opportunity to prevent it from devolving into outright chaos, and I don’t think I need to remind you of the consequences for the entire Terran Republic if the entirety of the Metal Legion is destroyed.”

  “I understand, General,” Jenkins said with conviction, “but we’ve got a theory we’re working on down here, and if we’re right about it, then we absolutely cannot withdraw from Shiva’s Wrath until we’ve seen this mission through.”

  “A theory?” Akinouye repeated with mild disapproval. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

  “We didn’t have enough supporting evidence to present it, General,” Jenkins replied guardedly before adding, “and we couldn’t jeopardize sensitive, mission-critical information security.”

  Akinouye nodded slowly as he seemed to take Jenkins’ meaning. “All right, Colonel,” he said, seeming to arrive at a conclusion, “I’ll oversee repairs up here until we’ve got the other drop-deck up and running. When that’s complete, I expect you to deliver a personal debriefing on this ‘theory’ of yours.”

  Jenkins cocked his head in concern. “General…are you ordering me to return to the Bonhoeffer in the midst of deployment in an active combat zone?”

  Akinouye smirked, and even at his venerable age, the expression was every bit as savage and primally-disconcerting as it had likely been a century earlier in the general’s life, “No, Colonel Jenkins, I’m not bringing you up here.”

  At that, the line went dead, and Jenkins leaned back in surprise.

  “Did I hear that right?” Styles asked under his breath.

  “I think you did.” Jenkins nodded seriously, gesturing to the privacy of his cabin. “You’d better prepare a top-sheet.”

  “On it, sir.” Styles nodded, standing from his station and making for Jenkins’ private cabin at the rear of Roy’s compartment.

  “Captain Xi,” Sarah Samuels insisted, “the people have a right to know.”

  “Right now, you know as much as I do, Ms. Samuels,” Xi replied irritably.

  “You won’t give me a straight answer,” Samuels snapped, her usual veneer of total control melting away in the aftermath of the devastating attack. “I just lost my uplink with the Bonhoeffer. Is it still in orbit or did the Jemmin destroy it?”

  “Wait.” Xi rounded on the reporter. “You have a direct link with the Bonhoeffer? Do you have any idea how many regs you violated by not informing me about that?”

  “My data-stream’s integrity is protected by the most fundamental laws of the Terran Republic’s Founding Articles,” Samuels retorted. “Don’t change the subject, Captain Xi. Is the Bonhoeffer still in orbit or did the Jemmin destroy it?”

  “Honestly?” Xi did her best to control her temper, which she suspected would soon tear loose of its moorings no matter how hard she tried to lock it down. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “My drones picked up multiple EMPs indicative of Terran nuclear warhead detonations,” Samuels continued. “Under the Terran Military Doctrine, tactical nuclear devices are only authorized for deployment in wartime, Captain Xi...”

  “I think you need to sit down, Ms. Samuels,” Blinky said, taking the reporter by the arm and trying to gently drag her from Xi’s cockpit.

  “Get your hands off me!” Samuels snapped, rounding on Elvira’s Monkey before returning her focus to Xi. “Terran humanity has a right to know, Captain Xi. Is the Terran Republic now officially at war with the Jemmin—or with the entire Illumination League?”

  “First off,” Xi said steadily, clenching her fists so hard that her nails dug into her palms, “tactical nukes are only authorized for deployment on inhabited worlds during wartime. Those restrictions don’t apply to uninhabited worlds like Shiva’s Wrath.”

  “You’re evading my question,” Samuels retorted, her professional veneer reasserting itself with each passing second. “Is the Terran Republic at war with the Jemmin?”

  Xi thought about playing word games or invoking operational security as was technically her right during combat conditions. But for reasons she could not immediately identify, she declined the chance to dance around the question and instead answered as honestly as she could.

  “How in the holy fuck would a mech driver know something like that? You know more of what’s going on outside this tub than I do, so why don’t you ask one of them. Do you want to know all that I know, Ms. Samuels?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the blond woman snarled, her eyes lighting up in anticipation.

  Xi shook her head darkly. “Then here’s the truth: I don’t know. All I know is they openly antagonized us without cause, and we didn’t return the favor. Then when they shot at us, we defended ourselves like we’ve been trained and authorized to do, but we didn’t chase them down to retaliate. Then they fired from orbit on a position danger-close to my unit, and again we declined to escalate the situation since no damage was done. And just now, they opened fire on our APCs from orbit, killing at least a hundred Terrans before launching a multi-pronged attack on our HQ,” she growled, thumping her fist against the arm of her pilot’s chair. “You’re Goddamned right we fired back with everything we had! But are we at war? Officially?” She snorted in derision. “That’s a question for the politicians, Ms. Samuels. My job is to locate and engage threats to Terran sovereignty…and that’s exactly what I intend to do for as long as I live.”

  The reporter seemed genuinely conflicted. It was clear that Xi had not given her the sound-bite she wanted, but it was also clear that she was far from disappointed by what Xi had given her.

  “Now…” Xi gestured to Blinky. “Private Staubach will escort you back to your station. I suggest you comply with his direction because I can assure you mine will be nowhere near as gentle if you make me unplug from this chair.”

  Samuels’ mask of professional detachment once again covered her face, and she wordlessly exited the cockpit with Blinky at her back.

  After she had gone, her question rang in Xi’s ears like the aftermath of a fifteen-kilo gun’s report:

  Are we at war with the Jemmin?

  11

  Aftermath

  “Here’s what I’ve got, Colonel,” Styles reported after Jenkins closed the door to his private cabin two hours after the Jemmin assault on Terran headquarters. “Using the Bonhoeffer’s sensor logs—” He handed Jenkins a data slate. “—the Jemmin completed their deep dive to the Vorr transceiver’s location, and that three minutes after they reached the site, they opened fire on us from orbit.”

  “But those fighter platforms didn’t tunnel under the ice instantaneously,” Jenkins grunted.

  “They’d been prepping this attack for days,” Styles agreed.

  “Why didn’t any of our thermals or seismics detect them?”

  “That, I can’t tell you,” Styles said with open frustration. “There is no way they should have been a
ble to tunnel that many times, that close to us, without our seismic scanners going off. Xi and I have been working on a theory, and you’re not going to like it.”

  “Let’s hear it.” Jenkins sat down in the chair opposite Styles.

  “We think they’ve corrupted every single sensor and targeting system in the battalion,” the technician explained. “We also think that we prevented them from a complete takeover of our information-processing systems by disconnecting every RF transceiver in the unit. Our guess is that their remote takeover has to occur in stages, either to prevent it from being detected or because it simply takes a certain amount of time for each takeover to complete.”

  Jenkins’ hackles rose as he realized that, as usual, Styles was right: he did not like that theory.

  “We’ve run diagnostics on every piece of gear multiple times since we’ve had targeting issues,” Jenkins observed. “They’ve all come back green.”

  “We think the first stage of this takeover is to re-write the diagnostics, so they’re blind to the effects of later stage modifications,” Styles explained. “I’ve looked as hard as I can, using every trick I know, but I still can’t see where they re-wrote our code. I’ve got the base firmware settings for every piece of hardware in the battalion stored on hard, unmodifiable systems up on the Bonhoeffer,” he explained. “I’ve already compared Roy’s systems to those on the hard copy and can’t find anything wrong, which means the problem is beyond my ability to see.”

  “Recommendation?” Jenkins asked grimly.

  Styles sighed in frustration. “A total reboot of every sensor and targeting system in the battalion, which means each mech needs to have its main computer rebooted as well.”

  “That could take two hours per mech—” Jenkins shook his head adamantly. “—and would return all custom neural link settings to default. It would take our pilots days of constant practice and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo to dial-in combat-ready settings.”