Frozen Fire

by C H Gideon

  “It’s what I’ve come up with, sir,” Styles said heavily. “We could switch everyone over to manual inputs and rotate the reboots through a modified off-duty schedule?”

  Jenkins shook his head. “Including Xi and Chaps, there are only five or six pilots in the battalion who could operate near-peak effectiveness on manual controls, and maybe that many more who would clear combat-readiness tests across the board. We simply haven’t had enough time to train everyone on their rigs.”

  “It’s what I’ve come up with, sir,” Styles repeated, a rare helpless note entering his voice.

  “All right.” Jenkins decided to change subjects. “What about the deep dive? Have we got any idea what they found down there?”

  “Not yet.” Styles shook his head. “But using the Bonhoeffer’s sensors, I’ve been able to locate several half-kilometer spheres of liquid water a kilometer or so below the surface. There are five of them, and they appear to have been Vorr staging areas of some kind, but the Jemmin have overtaken these sites. I can’t get a clear look at what the Vorr were keeping there.”

  “The Vorr are aquatic,” Jenkins mused. “They might have been storing perishables or something there.”

  “That would hold,” Styles agreed. “I just can’t confirm or refute that theory since I can’t get a good picture of what’s there. There are bits and pieces of Vorr machinery, but again, it’s too deep to get accurate information of what, exactly, that machinery does.”

  “All right, forget about the pools,” Jenkins decided. “Focus on the attack. Why assault us mere minutes after reaching the Vorr transceiver?”

  “That’s complicated.” Styles sighed. “Either they found what they were looking for and decided to eliminate us, which doesn’t seem logical…”

  “Agreed.” Jenkins nodded urgently.

  “Or,” Styles continued, “they didn’t find what they were looking for and decided that the risk of us having it was too great to ignore—and that, if we did have it, erasing us and it while risking an interstellar conflict was preferable to letting whatever it was get out in the open.”

  “Your theory’s looking better,” Jenkins mused. “It seems like whatever the Vorr came here to retrieve is something the Jemmin can’t risk letting us see, or heaven forbid, remove from this rock.”

  “I agree.” Styles nodded. “But I still don’t have any evidence. It’s all speculation at this point.”

  “It’s the best we’ve got to go on.” Jenkins shrugged. “Never let perfect be the enemy of good.”

  Styles snickered. “I’m not sure that saying applies here.”

  “I think it does,” Jenkins said matter-of-factly. “Information is just one variable in conflict resolution. It’s an important one, but anyone who thinks the best way through a difficult situation is always to have the maximum possible amount of information doesn’t understand the way this universe works. Indecision kills a group faster than any enemy could. In a choice between risking paralysis from lack of information, or risking failure because of ill-informed action, I’ll take an unproven working theory that keeps things rolling every time.”

  “More is lost to indecision than wrong decision?” Styles cocked his head skeptically.

  “Definitely.”

  Styles seemed comforted by that, which was Jenkins’ primary objective. “All right, then I’ll keep scouring for evidence,” Styles declared with seemingly renewed energy.

  “And see if you can come up with an alternative to mass-reboots of our mechs,” Jenkins added after the other man had made for the hatch. “If you can’t come up with anything in the next sixteen hours, I’ll need to make a decision on that front.”

  “Yes, sir,” Styles acknowledged.

  A few minutes later, Jenkins’ wrist-link chimed. “Jenkins, go.”

  “Colonel,” came the voice of the comm stander temporarily taking over for Styles, “I just received a coded message on White Band.”

  “Put it through,” Jenkins ordered, and the encrypted file appeared on his link. A quick series of inputs decoded the file’s contents, which were comprised of just two words:

  Havoc Inbound.

  Jenkins immediately connected with Captain Xi. “Elvira, do you copy?”

  “Elvira here,” acknowledged Xi.

  “We have a delivery en route bearing mission-critical supplies,” he half-lied. “Proceed to the following rendezvous coordinates and await further instructions.”

  There was a brief but pointed delay. “Copy that, Colonel. Who should I take as escort?”

  “No escort, Captain,” Jenkins replied firmly, knowing that Xi had yet to formally re-structure her battered company following its repeated encounters with the bugs. Three other platoons had engaged with the bugs since their first appearance, with each suffering serious damage, but only Xi had encountered the bizarre aliens more than once. “Take Elvira out there, and I’ll ensure you’re covered in-transit.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, making clear she disliked the idea of running out on the ice field alone and exposed. But while Havoc was inbound, he knew that its LZ was the safest place to be on Shiva’s Wrath.

  Elvira was less than three kilometers from the rendezvous point, but nothing was showing up on the scanners. “No escort,” Xi muttered irritably. “If this is some kind of game, Colonel…”

  She temporarily stopped herself from finishing that particular thought, and a moment before she was about to finish it with gusto, a flicker appeared on the edge of her neural-linked “vision.”

  “Finally,” she grunted, “a drop-can…”

  She trailed off as she realized what she saw was not, in fact, a drop-can. It was coming in on an aggressive approach vector and was too small to be a can. Then another icon appeared, followed by another, and another, until ten of the things registered at an altitude of thirty thousand meters.

  “What the…” She finally realized what she was seeing. “Aerospace fighters?”

  The Dietrich Bonhoeffer was outfitted with sixty void fighters and twenty aerospace fighters. The void fighters were only capable of maneuvering in space, but the aerospacers were able to come all the way down to the surface if atmospheric pressure wasn’t greater than three standard units.

  The fighters, flying an offset diamond formation, were soon joined by an eleventh icon, which approached at an angle far more aggressive than any drop-pod could survive.

  Her eyes went wide when she realized what was inbound.

  “Bahamut Zero…” she whispered, feeling goosebumps rise all across her body.

  Tearing through the atmosphere of Shiva’s Wrath, flanked by ten decelerating aerospace fighters, was the most terrifying vehicle ever deployed by the Terran Armor Corps. Angry orange flames poured off its hull as Bahamut Zero plunged through the worldlet’s frigid atmosphere.

  The massive vehicle was so large it would have taken a specially-designed drop-can twelve times the size of the one that Elvira rode down. Deploying such an enormous can would have required a special launch tube to be installed on the Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so Bahamut Zero was specifically designed as one of the few active-duty Armor Corps vehicles that did not require such a system to safely make planetfall.

  Designed as a would-be revolutionary armor platform, Bahamut Zero was a prototype that had eventually been abandoned due to the outrageously high costs of deploying it. Featuring both track-based locomotive systems as well as an eight-legged hybrid walker-roller system similar to Roy, the vehicle cut the distinctive image of a multi-legged beast conjured from the darkest nightmares humanity could endure.

  The aerospace fighters broke their diamond formation as Bahamut Zero reached the forty-thousand-foot mark. Two of the fighters broke for the deck, diving like pelicans while two more pairs swept left and right.

  Elvira’s sensors lit up with Jemmin missile blooms just eighteen kilometers from her current position. Using her newly-installed SRMs, she locked onto the Jemmin weapons and engaged with anti-missile rockets. Her rocke
ts tore upward, but the Jemmin missiles were moving nearly as fast as her anti-missile rockets.

  “Dammit,” she grunted, loading extended-range HE shells into her fifteens and targeting her guns on the missiles’ point-of-origin. “ER-HEs up! On the way!”

  Elvira’s guns cleared with a deafening roar, sending the twin extended-range shells toward the enemy position. She didn’t expect to hit the target directly, so she had spread her strike-points far enough that she might hit the stealthy vehicle with enough shrapnel to outline its position.

  The shells whistled through the air, taking a ponderous arc before striking exactly where she had aimed them. She felt a thrill course through her as a glimmer of sensor contact flickered into position at the furthest edge of the HE shells’ blast zone.

  Before she could even think to coordinate with the incoming fighters, a pair of railgun bolts skewered the Jemmin vehicle. Its power core containment failed, and the vehicle exploded in a brilliant dome of light that left nothing but a steaming crater of ice.

  Bahamut Zero hurtled toward the ground, passing the fifteen-thousand-foot mark where its braking thrusters engaged. Giant wings unfurled along its sides, and a maneuvering tail unfolded at the vehicle’s rear as the mighty war machine took control over its descent to the surface of Shiva’s Wrath.

  Xi watched with unvarnished awe, giggling with excitement as Bahamut Zero’s deployment chassis came down to seven hundred meters, stabilized its speed for two seconds, and dropped the peerless vehicle. The unburdened deployment frame pulled up, its condor-like wings sweeping back as rocket engines engaged and drove the now-hollow aerospacecraft up toward the heavens from which it had come.

  A combination of parachutes and braking thrusters delivered Bahamut Zero safely to the icy surface, where it landed with an authoritative crack less than a kilometer from Elvira’s present position.

  The battlefield behemoth immediately began to tear across the open ice-field, accelerating to a speed fully twice Elvira’s maximum in just six seconds. As it reached peak speed, Xi saw an inbound P2P connection request appear on her HUD.

  She accepted the request and fought to steady her voice amid the excitement of the moment. “Elvira here, over.”

  “This is Bahamut Zero with a message for all Armor Corps units on Shiva’s Wrath,” came the unmistakable, commanding voice of General Akinouye. “Havoc is on deck and operational.”

  Seeing Bahamut Zero arrive at the battalion’s new HQ was nothing short of breathtaking, even for Lee Jenkins. Displacing nearly five hundred tons, it bristled with more weaponry than a full company of mechs and had enough armor to stave off at least as many enemy platforms while it eliminated them with murderous precision.

  Sixteen railguns in quad-mounts, four LRM launchers with four tubes apiece, four MRM launchers with six tubes apiece, twelve SRM launchers with eight tubes apiece, twenty-two coilguns scattered across its hull, and four plasma cannons of the same design as Cave Troll’s comprised the arsenal of the Armor Corps’ pride and joy.

  Fielding Bahamut Zero was normally impractical due to the extensive costs associated with deploying and retrieving it. It took two heavy lifters, working in tandem, to pick the thing off a standard-gravity world and return it to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In fact, it had been sixteen years since Bahamut Zero last moved under its own power.

  And that had been for a Founding Day parade.

  All of which meant that, as shows of support went, the general had just given the most meaningful one that Colonel Jenkins could have hoped for. Akinouye’s message upon arrival was never once uttered, yet nonetheless remained loud and clear to every Terran on Shiva’s Wrath:

  We’re staying until the job’s done.

  Bahamut Zero rolled to a stop fifty meters from Roy’s position. In deference to the general’s arrival, Jenkins had removed Roy from the central point of the HQ and ceded that territory to his superior officer as both protocol and professional courtesy demanded.

  Unexpectedly, Bahamut Zero failed to assume the central position, opting instead for one even more removed than that which Roy occupied.

  Elvira, following close behind Bahamut Zero, assumed her assigned slot in the parking lot just as Bahamut Zero’s main boarding ramp lowered and a company of Black Berets disembarked. Black Berets were the special guard units of the Terran Armor Corps, and against the icy white backdrop of Shiva’s Wrath, their all-black uniforms seemed somehow more intimidating than usual.

  And as far as Lee Jenkins was concerned, that was saying quite a lot.

  He made his way toward the Black Berets’ formation with Styles at his side. They came to a stop just outside the quickly-assembled honor guard and waited at attention for the go-ahead signal.

  One of the Black Berets made no show of discretion as he ran a scanner over Jenkins and Styles from a safe distance, while his fellows steadily trained their weapons on the duo.

  “Clean!” declared the scanner-wielder.

  “Good,” General Akinouye’s voice boomed from the massive vehicle’s speakers.

  “Permission to come aboard, General?” Jenkins asked, as protocol dictated.

  “Permission granted,” Akinouye acknowledged.

  They moved up the steep ramp and came to the mech’s interior, where a young officer silently greeted them and gestured to the rear of the vehicle. Jenkins and Styles silently followed, turning a dozen times along the cramped passageway before arriving at an open door.

  Beyond the door was a conference table that looked like something from a trillionaire’s boardroom, and at the head of that table sat General Akinouye.

  “Come in, Colonel,” the longest-tenured member of the Terran Joint Chiefs gestured to a pair of unoccupied seats adjacent to his own. “Let’s hear this theory of yours.”

  12

  Asymmetry

  “I never thought I’d see the Zero make planetfall,” whistled Lieutenant Ford as the newly-formed six-mech patrol, led by Captain Xi, drew nearer to its teardrop-shaped route’s apex. “It must have been something seeing her come down with your own eyes, Captain.”

  “I’m not going to lie, Forktail,” she said, “I think I got wetter than you did, which I’m sure is a surprise to us both.”

  “Ha-ha,” Ford deadpanned.

  “Good work on the target reveal, Cap,” came the newly-assigned Jock riding Cave Troll, a 2nd Lieutenant named Yuan. “You painted that Specter like Bob Ross conjuring a cloud.”

  “Like Havoc even needed the help,” Ford chuckled. “The Zero’s so heavily-armored, I doubt six of those Jemmin bottle-rockets would have scratched the paint.”

  “Confidence to the point of cockiness is one thing, Forktail,” Xi chided, “but there’s nothing smart about getting hit in a fight, no matter how tough you are.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ford sighed. “You’re right as usual, Captain. But in the three days since the Zero arrived, the Jemmin haven’t done so much as pop a recon drone above the deck. And with Bahamut Zero enhancing the missile shield back at HQ, we’ve been able to boost these patrols to six mechs apiece. I doubt anyone comes messing with us now. They’re probably hunkered down in their hidey-holes, waiting for a cloaked ship or something to come pick them up.”

  “A worthy enemy strikes when you least expect it,” Xi replied irritably.

  “Elvira’s right,” agreed the Jock riding Widowmaker, the hundred-ton spider-shaped mech. “Forgetting Bahamut Zero, this patrol is the heaviest unit in the battalion, and we’re near max-distance from HQ. If the Jemmin attack, it will be when we’re stretched as thin as possible, which will be in the next ten minutes.”

  “Agreed,” White Zombie confirmed. “Eclipse, are you reading anything out there?”

  “Not yet,” Eclipse replied tersely, “but I’d have better luck if y’all weren’t nonstop jabbering in my ear.”

  “Copy that, Eclipse,” Xi said. “Pipe down and keep your eyes peeled.”

  Two minutes later, Eclipse declared, “Contact bearing zero-s
even-niner, range: eight kilometers.”

  A swarm of missiles bloomed from the indicated target point just as Xi put Elvira’s sensors on the area. Sure enough, a Jemmin Specter and at least three other, smaller vehicles appeared on the screen. About half of the Jemmin missiles were headed Xi’s way, with the other half headed to HQ.

  “Railguns, target inbound missiles and fire,” Xi barked as she zeroed in on the enemy missiles with Elvira’s rockets. Of the thirty-nine missiles sent up by the Jemmin at that location, three were instantly scraped off the board by railguns while rockets downed another four. That left twelve missiles inbound on her patrol’s location, and six of those weapons found their targets.

  Elvira’s rear-left leg was blown completely off by a direct hit that made her mech lurch so badly, Xi bit her tongue. With blood briefly spewing out of her mouth, she snarled and re-positioned her Scorpion-class mech to compensate for the lost leg.

  Cave Troll was struck by a pair of missiles, with one impact blowing its left plasma cannon completely off and the other tearing a hole in its left flank. Fortunately, the thickly-built mech maintained its footing and sent a burst of SRMs at the enemy in reply.

  The exact center of Forktail’s long chassis was struck by a missile, which by all rights should have destroyed the mid-sized vehicle outright. But the design of Forktail’s spinal armor was such that it distributed much of the explosion’s energy to the side and away from the central section, so instead of being killed outright, the nimble mech merely lost its front-left leg and was rendered all but immobile.

  “Eclipse, send a flare-burst to that position,” she commanded, deciding to test a theory her company had come up with in the last few days.

  “Flares on the way,” Eclipse acknowledged, and a quartet of specially-modified anti-missile rockets sped off on a low trajectory toward the Jemmin location.