Enemy Front

by T. E. Butcher

  “How do you mean?” Emma asked. Jon sighed.

  “It’s likely that a Union agent is physically present with someone who works for the General Staff or works in the same building,” he said. Emma raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s a bit antiquated, isn’t it?” she asked. “Most espionage is done in cyberspace or by a sympathizer.” Jon pointed at her.

  “If we’re talking about a Tharcian network, that would technically be true,” he said. “That being said, if someone were to form a network against Tharsis, they’re more likely to go analog because of the strength of Tharcian cybersecurity.” He waved his hand almost dismissively. “And your privacy laws preclude using your advanced cybersecurity to actively moniter your people, which hurts when you’re trying to weed out collaborators and spies.”

  Starnes shook his head. “We can’t compromise that,” he said. “Besides, how would you differentiate someone with a harmless political opinion from a Union spy based purely on their social media or private statements? You couldn’t, but persecuting them all the same just creates collaborators.”

  “He has a point,” Emma said. “It looks like we have our work cut out for us, oh did anyone get anything on the Gergő Gulyás? The guy Markos replaced?”

  “Not much beyond his fun name,” Starnes replied. “Guys, a total recluse, lives in a cabin on the edge of a lake. I guess working in cybersecurity will make you want to cut yourself off from everything.” He rose from the table, noticing the decorations and added fanfare. “It always amazes me how seriously the people of Reichsburg take Federation day.”

  Jon chuckled. “Let your people have their pride,” he said. “It’s a big accomplishment to stand on your own feet. Trust me back home, they feel the same way about our independence.” After saying goodbye, Starnes noticed a flyer for the President’s Federation Day address. I wonder if Rebekah will be there.

  “Alright,” Webb said. “Let’s get some patrols going now that we know the limits of the abandoned section.” As far as Mo was aware, about an eight of the facility lay abandoned along one side of the mountain, with the areas deep underground and closer to the peak seeing much heavier traffic.

  Much of the underground areas possessed panzerter sized corridors and hangers, Wesser relived it was intended as a place to store and maintain hidden reserves in case of a nuclear attack, but Mo had doubts that anyone would seriously consider using nuclear or chemical weapons, or dropping a colony as Mar’s current climate and atmosphere were only a few decades over a hundred years old and relatively fragile compared to Earth’s.

  “Do I have any volunteers?” Webb asked. Mo raised his hand, as well as Holtslander and two other drop troopers. “Alright you lot, understand this is all knife in the dark stuff, no yelling, screaming and guns blazing, got it?”

  “Got it,” they all said. Webb showed them on a map the area they wanted them to check out. To Mo’s surprise, Holtslander and the other drop troopers, Dusek and Ozol, were their names, shed their half frames from their legs and torsos and stretched.

  “What?” Ozel said. “It’s a lot easier to be sneaky when these things aren’t whirring and clanking and making a ton of noise.” Mo nodded as they left the Barracks area they made camp in.

  “Makes sense, that’s fair,” he said. They made their way down the dark forbidding halls that once had been space command. Mo shook his head as they passed another pile of trash. “To think this would still be space command if not for getting Deimos,” he said.

  “Pretty lucky on our part,” Dusek admitted. “Because we would have been screwed in 2112 without it, of course, we didn’t have the space infrastructure then that we do now.”

  Ozol snorted. “I’m pretty sure they have a similar place like this closer to the coast,” he said. “You know, to move the government in case someone gets cute with nukes, or an orbital bombardment.” Dusek shook his head.

  “That’s just a conspiracy,” he said. “They’d have made something like that public.”

  “Why? So the Unis or God knows who else could nuke it or worse, drop a colony on it?” Ozol replied.

  “If you’re confident in your underground fortress, why would you worry about something like that?” Dusek asked. “it’s what its for!”

  “That’s not something you can really test until you’re sure,” Mo replied, hoping to end the maddening conversation. Fortunately, Holtslander did by holding up his hand.

  “Look up ahead,” the sergeant said quietly. An access panel on the wall glowed. It had power, which meant… They’d arrived at the occupied areas of the lab. After some jimmying, Dusek opened the door, and they cautiously stepped through.

  The occupied area seemed like it was hardly in any better shape than the unoccupied section. Strip lights hastily attached to the ceiling illuminated the hallways as they closed the door behind them. Mo noted that it had been taped off so as no-one wandered inside by mistake. If anyone inspects this too closely, they’ll realize we’re here.

  The musty corridors with hasty lighting continued until they came to one area. Foggy class indicated a chilled room while Mo could make out tile mats placed on the floor and walls to insulate the room a bit better. Oddly, there was no lock or code, probably because the room didn’t originally have one.

  Confirming Mo’s suspicions, the room was indeed chilly. Freezing, in fact. A lab station on the back wall drew Mo’s attention, while the drop troopers investigated evenly spaced pods throughout the room. Numbers and identifiers flashed across the screen.

  Mo didn’t have the context to understand most of it. He recognized Olympian followed by a number seemed to be the predominant identifier, but had no class as to what for. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched Holtslander investigate one of the pods.

  “What do you have Mo,” the older man asked. Mo shrugged.

  “Identifiers and codes for… something, I’m not sure,” he replied. “What’s in the pods?”

  “Vials. Looks like blood,” he replied. Then Holtslander paused. “Read one of those identifiers.” Mo’s eyes crawled across the screen.

  “Uh, here, Olympian-0331 to 6109,” he said. “Do you have a match?” Holtslander looked at the pods before walking up to the monsters and leaning over Mo’s shoulder.

  “You said the tubers are grown from templates, right?” he asked. Mo nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s what one of them said,” he replied. Then it dawned on him. After two decades of growing people, the Union possibly saw a point where they’d face issues with their available material. “They’re adding Olympians,” he said. “They’re making tubers out of Olympians.”

  17

  As dropship engines screamed overhead, Kennedy looked over to see Irving’s hair billowing in the engine wash. “I didn’t know we were taking visitors,” he shouted over the shrill engines. Irving shrugged as the Union aircraft carefully descended.

  “They kinda just showed up, unannounced,” she replied. As the squat ugly machines touched down, he was glad he stayed in a panzerter. The Nimbus class dropship was, in his unbiased opinion, one of the ugliest things he’d ever seen created by humanity. Its bulbous cockpit area and weapon pods raised a single finger salute to aerodynamic design. Their multipurpose crew/cargo pods made each machine look pregnant as they flew purely on the power of thrust alone.

  Kennedy’s opinion shifted when he saw the patches on several of them as they poured out of their dropships. “That’s the 201st Raider Battalion,” he said. “They’re veterans of the Lowell crisis. My predecessor, comrade Blake, was a friend of their late commander.” He folded his arms as one of the raiders approached him and held out a hand.

  “You must be Guard-Lieutenant Colonel Kennedy,” he said. “I’m Guard-Major Ronan Murray, we’re glad you cleared us to land.” Kennedy shook the man’s hand, nothing his firm grip.

  “It’s my pleasure, comrade Major,” he said. “But we’re in the middle of an operation. I must ask, why did you choose to land here?” The major’s
smile faded.

  “We’re in rough shape,” he said. “We’re coming back from a raid behind the lines, but their air defenses were much better than anticipated. If you have hydrogen to spare, as well as food, we would appreciate that.” Sheepishly, he pointed back at his dropships. “To be honest, I’m not sure we could have got much farther without refueling.” Kennedy caught Irving looking at him and nodded.

  “Let me consult with my XO real quick,” he said. “We’ll see if there’s something we can do.” He turned and leaned in close to Irving.

  “We’re short on supplies ourselves,” she whispered, her lips centimeters from his ear. “We can spare the fuel because we have a lot less fuel cell to refuel, but the food will be an issue.” Kennedy nodded, glancing back at the drop troopers as he did.

  “I’m going to need you to put on your diplomatic hat,” he said. “Take the scouts over to Weathers and tell him we need food from them, I know they have supplies for his personal and guards, more than enough in fact, in the mean time, we’ll give these drop troopers everything we can spare.”

  “You’re just going to feed them, fuel them and let them leave?” she asked. Kennedy shook his head.

  “Absolutely not,” he replied. “I’m going to get some favors out of them. Chief among those things is relaying our status to Meyer, we’re at the end of our rope out here and I can’t imagine the rest of division doing much better.” Irving nodded.

  “Ok then, ill prepare to visit Weather’s lab and wrangle us some supplies,” she said and walked back into their headquarters, as Kennedy walked back towards the raider commander.

  “We’ll refuel your dropships,” Kennedy said. “And feed your people, but we’ll need you to do us a few favors.” Guard-Major Murray smiled sheepishly.

  “To be honest, I kind of expected that,” he said. “What can we do for you?”

  Kennedy held up a few fingers. “First, we’re going to need a message relayed to Guard-Brigadier Meyer at our division headquarters, second, we’ll some recon to the southeast, we left some Tharcians in bad shape that way and we want a better report of the damage we inflicted.”

  “And the last thing?” Murray asked. Kennedy grinned.

  “Ferry our seriously wounded to the rear. We don’t have the resources for a proper medevac at the moment,” he said. “Well, what do you say, comrade Major? A small price to pay for a full tank and a full stomach.” The Major shrugged and waved his raiders over to go inside.

  “What other choice do we really have?” he said. Kennedy patted the man on the back as he led him towards his ski resort headquarters.

  “Look comrade Major, we’re all out here doing what we have to do to win this war and go home,” he said. “Our situation isn’t that different. You need food and fuel. I need an analog message delivered and some recon. How hard could it be?” Then he noticed the bags under the man’s eyes as he stepped into better lighting. The hollowness of his face mad e Kennedy shiver. For a moment, anyway.

  Chaney looked up at the heavy lift airship. The relatively small zeppelin idled in the underground hanger as ground crews prepped her drone escorts for take off. Massive Pulleys loaded the Phobian and the new Martian Sniper into her cargo hold. With a sigh, he turned back towards the Ballards and Commodore Mendez.

  “Do you have to go?” Penny asked. She whined less these days, a sign she was maturing. Ballard sighed and patted her on the head as he knelt in front of her.

  “Yeah, I do sweetie,” he said. “I’ve gotta go keep bad people from getting into our country and hurting people.”

  “But we’re safe here,” she said. Ballard nodded.

  “Yeah we are,” he said. “But other people closer to the front aren’t, so I need to go keep them safe.” He rose and nodded to Chaney and commodore Mendez.

  “She’ll be safe with us,” Mendez said. “I’ll make sure she keeps her good grades.” She set her hands on the young girl’s shoulders. “And there’s plenty of chelate in it for you if you behave,” she whispered. That brought a grin to Penny’s features as Ballard nodded to Chaney and walked back towards the airship.

  “Daddy,” Penny called. “Go kick their butts!” Ballard smiled and threw his daughter a mock salute just before boarding the airship. Within minutes, the massive vehicle ascended out of the hanger, its escorts deploying in formation.

  Chaney turned and led Mendez and Penny out of the hanger. “I’m not even sure where to begin,” he said. “Thanks to the research cooperation with Avalon, I’ve got a lot more information for my departments to digest, some of which I’ve already been able to put to use.”

  “Really?” Mendez asked with a raised eyebrow. “Masterson claims that they haven’t provided him any seriously useful data.”

  Her words caught Chaney by surprise. “Any?” He said. “Not even, I don’t know, space fortress development?” He shook his head as they began the long walk down the tunnel to Congregation’s center hub. “That’s all Camlot is, a fully realized Los Estrellas.”

  “Do you think he’s hiding anything?” Mendez asked, to which he shrugged.

  “Who’s saying?” Chaney said. “Maybe they haven’t told him anything he hasn’t already figured out, maybe he thinks its not important enough to use like when he hid information on the supergroups from us.” He looked around, just to be sure no one was tailing them. “Did you find anything else out about Operation Ascent?”

  Mendez shook her head. “Nothing that we haven’t already discussed,” she said. “Which is frustrating, it’s clearly some kind of space bourne endeavor and as our surface liaison, I should be privy to that information!”

  “They’re keeping hush, hush about all of this,” Chaney said. “And I don’t like it.” They caught a grin back towards Congregations’ central hub. As they stepped out onto the platform, things clearly didn’t sit well in the central hub. People stood on the balconies from the floor to the domes, waving signs and shouting.

  “Who’s striking?” Mendez asked. “I didn’t read anything about this.” Chaney scowled as he took in the rowdiness of the crowd.

  “This seems spontaneous,” he said. “Which means the Milita will break this up for not having the proper permits, come on, let’s get out of here.” They double timed it, taking Penny by the hand and guiding her towards the residential halls. The crowds thinned, but still people held signs and chanted slogans throughout the halls.

  Chaney caught sight of one particular poster. This one had a campaign poster for the First Minister with the word LIAR slapped all over it.

  “Let’s head to your office,” Mendez said, fear rising in her voice. Chaney nodded and led the woman and girl away from the halls and more towards the offices. As he approached, he saw Milita squared up with protesters.

  “Why are we going here?” Penny asked.

  “Because I need to show you my secret stash of candy,” Chaney said with a glance at Mendez. He led them past the Milita, who quickly realized who they were. Before the crowd could surge after them, the Milita closed up their barrier once more. When they entered Chaney’s office, the adults let out a sigh of relief while Penny went and sat expectantly on his couch.

  Before he or Mendez could say anything, Chaney opened a drawer and revealed it was full of hard candies for the young girl. While she pulled out a datapad to watch cartoons and excitedly eat candy, Chaney took a seat behind his desk with Mendez over his shoulder...

  “Now comrade Mendez,” he said. “Let me introduce to you the Martian II.”

  Sweat poured from Bartonova’s brow as she sank her barrel brush down the tube of her Tiger’s magnetic rifle. Metal shavings from sabot cradles piled up at the mouth of the weapon, and Bartonova smiled the whole time. This is going to be my first huge battle. The scale of this is going to be huge. She imagined the chaos and thrills. A division level attack, one of the few planned ones, at least by her side. And I’ll play a pivotal role.

  She smiled at the thought of racking up three more kills to become an
ace. She wondered if they’d give her a fancy title, like Black Lion or the countless ones in space. The Tigress of Eden? Eden’s Tiger? The Duchess of Eden? Brainstorming titles and accolades consumed her so thoroughly, she didn’t notice Zoro and Fletcher trying to speak to her.

  “What is it?” She asked, wiping the sweat from her brow. She’d tied her field jacket around her waist, as much to keep cool as to show off her muscular arms.

  “Uh, maintenance is done,” Zoro said. Fletcher nodded and handed her a stack of paperwork.

  “You need to sign off on all of these,” she said. “A few of your Iglo-Igliz- ugh the IFVs, some of them have serious faults.” While Bartonova let go of the barrel brush to look over the paperwork herself, Fletcher continued to try to say Iglasio under her breath.

  “Its Iglasio,” Zoro finally said. “Though most people call them Iggys.” Fletcher raised an eyebrow at the other woman.

  “Why are they called that?” she asked. “That word sounds entirely made up. Is it an acronym?” Zoro shook her head.

  “It’s Hungarian,” she said. “It’s a language a lot of Tharcians used to speak before they came to Mars. It means workhorse by the way.”

  “Huh, that’s oddly fitting,” Fletcher mused as Bartonova began fiddling with her pen and singing papers like a madwoman. “Are you in a hurry, ma’am?”

  Bartonova merely nodded and kept signing. I have more important things to do than this. “What are the Union versions called?” Zoro asked.

  “Capricorn are the IFVs, Taurus are the APCs,” Fletcher replied. “Though I’m sure you have an unflattering reporting name for them.”

  “We just call them ugly,” Zoro replied. “Though to be fair we call the dropships ugly as well.” Fletcher shook her head.

  “I heard you call a Martian a tinhat once,” she said. “And now I can’t unsee it.”