by Aer-ki Jyr
The tough part of this mission may have been over, but the cleanup was going to take a long time. As Paul followed Jason he also searched around the rest of the spaceport, taking a crude head count and coming up with more than 1000, and those were just the ones in camera range.
No, the danger hadn’t passed just yet, but as long as they were sitting king of the hill he had no doubts as to their eventual success. A lot of fighting still had to be done, but even the newbs could handle this, as long as they were careful.
Paul just hoped that somebody had figured out a place to send the prisoners, because they were collecting an awful lot of them and he had no intentions of staying put and playing babysitter while there was still more fighting to do.
Disarmament
1
March 20, 2060
“Missiles incoming!” the remote pilot said, his hands frantically working the controls to prepare the cutter’s defensive systems.
“I guess that’s a no, people,” Minsk said, seated in the captain’s chair of the Orion, the flagship of the Star Force fleet, while he watched from afar the confrontation with the Chinese warship. “Take them out.”
There was a few seconds delay, but not from the signal lag, for the battle was taking place only a few thousand miles away, before the cutter launched a small stream of its own missiles in a parabolic trajectory. The furious key strikes on behalf of the pilot had been setting up the warship’s defensive apparatus, which began picking off the swarm of incoming Chinese missiles a few seconds later at range with the ship’s pair of anti-missile laser cupolas.
The delay was the result of having to reprogram their own missiles to fly wide and then come in on the much larger Chinese warship from an angle that would keep them clear of the enemy missiles and not get in the way of the defensive countermeasures. On the Orion’s display screen Minsk and the bridge crew watched as the tiny dots that represented the enemy missiles began to wink out one at a time while the cutter’s missiles, which appeared as a small school of fish swimming the distance between ships, took the long way around.
Once the laser defenses had chewed nearly 2/3rds of the enemy missiles apart the cutter began shooting off smaller missiles to intercept the remainders. The ‘intercepts’ skirted across the screen at much greater speed, meeting up and cancelling out the rest of the incoming dots.
Minsk nodded approvingly and watched the offensive missiles track towards their target…an elongated Chinese destroyer shaped similar to a submarine without the dorsal tower. Instead there were two symmetrical appendages running the length of the smooth port and starboard hulls that contained missile boxes, which even now sprouted more plumes, indicating the launch of a second, much larger wave of missiles.
As they launched, an anti-missile Gatling gun mounted on the bow of the Chinese destroyer took aim at the incoming missiles, firing a slew of bullets in their general direction. Computer controlled, it tracked and targeted the Star Force missiles via radar and took out four of the 16 before they hit the hull, cracking the bow of the ship open to space in a series of explosions followed by a rush of atmosphere that propelled additional debris away from the wounded vessel.
While the ship suffered through its death throes the Star Force cutter began backing away, creating more distance and rate between the ships to slow the relative approach of the missiles while the lasers trimmed down their numbers. More than 50 had been launched, and there were only so many the two cupolas could track and destroy in the handful of seconds before impact.
Just when it looked like the cutter was going to be overwhelmed its missile racks sent a flurry of intercepts out, looking like a crazed swarm of bees on the radar display, as the computer-controlled attack selected individual missile targets for each intercept at a speed no pilot could hope to match. Within four seconds the fireless fireworks display ended with all enemy missiles destroyed and a cloud of debris surrounding and bouncing off the cutter, but leaving its remaining intercept count dangerously low.
With that knowledge, the pilot switched the power source charging the laser cupolas over to recharging the capacitor for the medium laser. Once it was charged he targeted the Chinese destroyer’s missile racks and blew a hole in the port side near the back, with a secondary internal explosion multiplying the damage tenfold. He repeated the attack several times, running the length of the long box and destroying the missiles inside, along with a small portion of the hull on that side of the ship, which now looked like a cigar with the front end cut off.
After several minutes of inactivity from the destroyer the radar screen lit up with new contacts and the pilot’s control board flashed multiple warnings as whoever was left alive on the warship launched ALL of the missiles on the starboard side…
“Damn it,” the pilot said loud enough for the entire bridge crew to hear as he kicked the engines into maximum thrust and tried to futilely outrun the missiles as he switched the laser power back over to the cupolas and primed the remaining intercepts.
“Finish off the destroyer,” Minsk ordered, seeing the writing on the wall.
“Aye,” the pilot confirmed, switching his attention to the offensive missiles and launching his remaining count seconds before the enemy wave arrived. The Star Force missiles launched up from the ‘rear’ of the ship and arced lazily overhead as they streaked towards the destroyer while the cutter was hit below. The tiny warship took the first few hits on its armor successfully, but the following cascade of more than 200 missiles punched through the weakened plates and into the interior, repeatedly blasting apart the sturdy craft like a jackhammer.
The control and visual feeds went dark, with the only remaining active battle display on the bridge belonging to a distant Cyclops station, which had the Chinese ship centered in its high powered telescope. Minsk watched the cutter’s missiles thoroughly rip apart the destroyer, leaving a more or less intact corpse of a ship, but with so much hull damage that he doubted any pressurized sections remained.
“Tag the location for cleanup,” the Captain ordered, “with priority on picking up our debris. We can’t afford anyone getting their hands on the armor fragments and reverse engineering the Herculium…or anything else for that matter. What’s the status on the other target?”
“Intercept ETA at 42 minutes,” another remote pilot answered.
“Stay on your toes,” Minsk warned, leaning back in his chair and turning his attention to his personal display screens and controls. He hadn’t expected to lose the cutter, but then again this was their first engagement against the Chinese line warships, which were designed a bit more robustly than their ‘pirate’ fleet had been. With an entirely missile-based offense, each ship contained an intimidating amount of firepower and their destroyers were certainly capable of living up to their class namesake, but missile for missile Star Force’s were more powerful, had longer range, better guidance systems, and faster attack speeds.
Same went for the ships’ armor, engines, navigation, missile defense…everything Star Force had was superior in design, so the idea of a cutter taking on a destroyer wasn’t so farfetched.
Minsk mentally started calculating the mistakes/disadvantages they’d encountered, with the first being the mandatory offer of surrender. The Archons had ordered it so, but it meant that the Chinese had been able to launch the first strike.
The second had been having the cutter move in so close to the destroyer. Star Force had a missile range advantage…it wasn’t much more than 25% by their estimates, but the next time they approached to issue the ultimatum they would stay outside of the enemy’s effective range while just edging inside of theirs.
Third, he wouldn’t discount their practice of an all-out missile launch. True, this ship was already dying and had nothing to lose from launching all their missiles simultaneously, but given that the Chinese offense was entirely missile-based, conventional wisdom would have them launch small segments of their arsenal at intervals, for if they expended all of their ordinance on one target
it would leave them unarmed. If the results of this battle made their way back to the Chinese, then they might very well consider using such a massive attack at the outset of the next engagement.
Minsk frowned, then turned to his comm officer. “Check the logs and see if there was any comm traffic coming from the enemy during the battle.”
The woman nodded and worked her terminal for a long moment, then nodded an affirmative. “Two signals. A lengthy one at the outset, then a brief one at the end.”
“Then they know we’re after them,” Minsk said for all to hear.
“Captain, incoming signal from the Turok.”
“Put it through here,” he said, toggling a small side screen near his command chair. A moment later his fellow Captain’s face appeared.
“I was watching your feeds,” Voss explained, “congratulation on the kill.”
“They got one too, unfortunately.”
“Yes, a bit of luck on their part. That first attack should have incapacitated them and didn’t. Makes me wonder exactly where the bridge is on their ships.”
“Any further contacts?” Minsk asked.
“We picked up a blip in zone 6 that we’re tracking down, but no radar contact yet.”
Minsk nodded, knowing that was at least something to go on. Ever since the Chinese fleet had gone dark they’d been like ghosts, with only a few errant passes through Star Force radar detection zones. The Archons had a number of their civilian ships passing through dark areas with active radar to keep the Chinese from having a static detection map to work around and they’d come up with several hits, but most of them were the Chinese cargo fleet.
The ship he’d just destroyed had cut through low orbit on a high speed redirection angle, thinking perhaps that Star Force didn’t have any ships fast enough to intercept before it escaped radar range…but thanks to a little mathematical calculation and naval extrapolation they were able to find the ship again and were in the process of hunting it down, but the real question running through Minsk’s mind was what it had been doing coming out of ‘cover’ in the first place.
If the Chinese were simply evading the Star Force fleet then running through low orbit literally waving their hands for all to see was the last thing they should be doing. If they were intent on resupplying and supporting their troops on Luna then they’d likewise take the backdoor approach to the moon and stay out of radar contact as long as possible…but if they had some other agenda, such as targeting Star Force orbital facilities, then he, Voss, and Harper were going to have a serious problem on their hands.
“Any word from Luna?”
“I’ve got it buttoned up tight,” Voss said confidently. “The Chinese haven’t brought a ship within detection range yet and the ones that were here are long gone.”
“What about the fight on the surface?”
“I spoke with Paul an hour ago. He wanted to make sure the Chinese didn’t have any support ships nearby. They’re beginning their assault on the Chinese territorial zones as we speak.”
2
With a subtle bang the dropship landed on the rough lunar surface, its landing legs sinking into the soil and stabilizing the giant golf ball before the cargo bay door opened up and a ramp extended down, revealing a narrow portion of the starlit sky and dim surface to Paul as he looked outside.
“Let’s go,” Jason said, rolling his mongoose out of the bay and down the ramp, momentarily disappearing in front of Paul then reappearing in the distance as he wasted no time milling about the landing site. Randy followed him out, then Jack and Megan, leaving the otherwise empty bay with Paul as its only occupant. He gave Megan a two second head start then accelerated out of the bay, dropping off sharply down the ramp and jamming his armored body against the seat as the four wheeler bottomed out on the sandy surface.
Paul hit the accelerator and took off, following the single file line of mongooses as Jason led them across the airless lunar surface in one of the 14 Chinese territorial zones towards their regional base of operations. Aside from a scattering of remote sites, the Chinese had only colonized three of the zones, with the bulk of their infrastructure being piecemealed purchased units connected by a spider web of buried tunnels into functional, yet awkward cities.
The nearest of which lay 52 kilometers distant and was defended by three SAM turrets that prevented the Star Force dropships from approaching any closer. As it was, the pilot had had to skim the surface in a fuel guzzling hover to get them in this close, with the rest of their prepped dropships passing by overhead in parking orbits, waiting for the all clear signal to begin their assault in force.
The other half of the 2s were landing at a different spot on the perimeter, tasked with taking out a different surface to air missile launcher, while Sara and a group of 1s took out the third. Simultaneously the other teams were making landings around the perimeters of the other two Chinese cities in prep for the coordinated assault. According to orbital surveillance, the SAMs were the only defensive weapons present at the sites, which meant after they were taken down the Star Force troops should have little trouble taking the territorial zones.
Meanwhile, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma teams had been dispatched to search, capture, and clear the disconnected Chinese sites of personnel, most of which were assumed to be unmanned at present, but they still needed to be secured. All of those sites were reachable only by dropship, too far away from the Chinese rovers to reach and without any surface or subsurface rail line connections…which meant they were also far enough away from the Chinese cities to be outside of the defensive sphere afforded by the SAM launchers.
Paul doubted the newbs would have any trouble, but giving them the first shot at it not only provided them with some more unsupervised combat experience, but it freed up the trailblazers from the monotony of having to clear each and every one of the hundreds of Chinese sites so that Star Force’s army of engineers could come in and start cataloging, dismantling, and scrubbing the surface of the moon clean of any trace of the Chinese presence.
The bulk of the fighting was over, he assumed, given the lack of security they’d observed from orbit. Most of the structures within the city were small, meaning even if they’d wanted to, the Chinese couldn’t mass a large number of troops to throw at them…which also meant whatever fighting was to come would be close quarters in confined hallways, most of which were of Star Force manufacture. The Chinese had purchased hundreds of the prefab units, but had insisted on installing them themselves, so the exact layout of the cities was guesswork, based on orbital analysis.
The largest structures were prefab domes made by Udaris Industries. They contained an interior atmosphere the size of a football stadium and could house regular ‘buildings’ inside. The city the 2s were roaring across the lunar landscape towards contained four of the large domes, connected through dozens of access tubes to the smaller Star Force structures, with a scattering of other corporate purchases mixed in between.
Paul twisted the handlebars on his mongoose slightly to the right as the Archon line swung around a house-sized boulder and down into a shallow crater. He saw Jason ramp up into a bit of hang time on the far side, then disappear over the rim as he followed Megan down into the center. She swerved a bit to avoid a cluster of rocks that had rolled down, skidding through the dirt as she did and making a small dust cloud that hung in the ‘air’ briefly behind her.
Paul punched through the cloud, trying to match her tracks as he climbed up the far side of the crater, goosing the throttle to keep his momentum as his wheels began to break traction. A moment later he came up over the rim and likewise caught some air, then landed heavily on the four wheeler’s ample shocks and skidded a bit as he rebalanced his weight and followed the others off across the relatively flat landscape.
He saw the others shrinking a bit and accelerated, trying to keep pace. Jason was keeping them moving fast, but Paul noticed that the speed was just below the mongoose’s maximum, giving him a little throttle to work with to catch back
up, and once he was tucked in neatly 12 meters behind Megan he took the opportunity to look around a bit as he followed in her tracks, trusting Jason to navigate for them.
This portion of the moon was currently in shadow, but the ‘night’ was brighter than he expected, given that the Earth was glowing brightly just over the horizon, giving them more than enough illumination to travel by. All around them were small rocks littering the sandy landscape, and their route to the Chinese city wavered here and there as they avoided some of the larger ones, but they more or less held a straight line trajectory across the bleak, waterless landscape. Nothing living was present, and aside from the vibration felt through his seat and handlebars there was no sound, making their journey across Luna’s surface both eerie and awe inspiring.
After several kilometers Jason finally broke radio silence, jolting Paul a bit after having spent so much time in silence.
“Crack ahead. Make ready to jump.”
Paul tightened his grip on the mongoose’s handlebars and looked ahead, trying to spot the fissure. Nothing was visible save for a wash of gravel. They’d passed out of the thicker sand areas and had been traveling on what would have been hard packed dirt back on Earth, but the lunar version was more rocky. Never the less it was diminishing their drag and travel time, with Paul pegging out at 42 mph in the smoothest areas.
Up ahead he saw Jason’s red helmet bob up into the air, then drop back down just before Randy did the same. Paul still couldn’t see the crack, but then again they were traveling down a shallow depression, looking like a dry creek bed, and Megan was blocking part of his view directly ahead.
Just before she jumped he spotted it…a sharp drop off cutting into the lunar surface. He had only a few seconds to react at the speed they were traveling, but it was more than enough. Just before he hit the precipice he jabbed the ‘jump’ button on his left handlebar and triggered the hydraulic lifts in each of the wheels that ‘bumped’ the mongoose up in the air a few inches…except that in 1/6th gravity those few inches became a few feet, launching Paul up into the air as he sailed over the two meter wide crack in the rocky surface.
