by Aer-ki Jyr
“This is Archon Ryan-096. Star Force is confiscating your base, General. We’d like you to leave in an orderly manner.”
Marvin laughed, summoning a bit more confidence than he felt. “This is sovereign US territory, son. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Your country forfeited its claim to sovereign territory when you disregarded the sovereignty of the other nations. Likewise, the territorial possessions of the other nations involved in this conflict will likewise be confiscated and all of you will be returning to Earth. The United States is hereby banned from Mars, meaning both the planet and orbit. We’re here to enforce that ban, and since your base is the most heavily defended on the planet, we figured we’d start with you to set an example for the others.”
“I’d like to know how you expect to enforce that ban,” the General said evenly.
“Can I take that as a no?”
“You can.”
“That’s what we expected,” Ryan said casually. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
“Orbital bombardment?” the General asked, knowing he had no defense against such an attack.
“We’re not here to kill you, General. We’re here to evict you. Though if you resist there may be some casualties.”
“May I ask what you intend to evict us with?”
“You’ll see soon enough. Tell your men if they want to live not to shoot back.”
“Likewise, son. You may have our Navy on its heels, but if you choose to tangle with the Army you’re going to be in a world of hurt.”
“As we figured, you require an example,” Ryan said, knowing that this was the way it had to go down. “But just for the record, I was born in 2025, which makes you the youngling.”
Marvin’s face scrunched up in confusion at what the obviously young voice was saying. “Is that your idea of a joke?”
“No joke, General. I have decades of military experience the likes of which make you look like a raw recruit, so believe me when I say you’re about to get the hammer dropped on you if you don’t surrender now. Last chance.”
“I’d like to see some of this combat experience you spoke of,” Marvin flaunted. “Take your best shot.”
“Don’t say you didn’t ask for this,” Ryan said sarcastically, then cut his end of the comm line.
“Eyes peeled, people! We’ve got incoming. Find out from where. Put the base on alert, I want everyone at combat stations and the field units prepped for immediate deployment. We cannot afford to be caught off guard.”
The command center staff went into a flurry of motion, bringing the entire military complex to life in preparation for the promised assault, but the Americans wouldn’t discover the source of the attack for another 20 minutes until a solitary contact manifested itself on radar.
“Sir! We’ve got something to the west. Something big.”
“A dropship?” the General wondered aloud.
“No, sir. Radar reports a ground contact…no, make that two ground contacts, moving slowly. They’re coming out of the sandstorm!”
“Deploy the tanks, but have the frogs hold back until the attackers clear the storm. I won’t risk them flying through that shit. Where’s the storm tracking?”
“Heading south/southeast. We might get the edge of it within an hour or so, but the heart of the storm looks like it’s going to miss.”
Marvin nodded, studying the radar silhouettes, trying to determine what was coming at them. Suddenly half a dozen smaller dots manifested around the larger ones…then a couple more appeared, followed by a few more as they gradually made their way out of the whirling sands enough for the radar to pick them up.
“Tanks escorting troop transports?”
“Maybe,” the radar tech answered. “Too far out to tell, and the storm is preventing visuals.”
The General stood up a bit straighter. “Let them come to us. Ready all defense turrets, form up the tanks inside the outer wall along the west gate…then open the gate.”
“Sir?”
“If they want in, they can take the route we give them or try to break through the wall. If they choose the gate they’ll have to thin out to come through, and when they do it’ll be a turkey shoot.”
“Yes, sir,” the comm officer said, relaying the appropriate orders out to the gate outposts and the tank commanders.
“Status on the airfield?”
“8 minutes,” another staffer reported.
The General nodded and took a seat, watching as his command readied itself for a fight. The Star Force Archon had been right about one thing…this was the most heavily defended American base on Mars. Aside from the outer wall, which was a 30 meter thick combo of concrete and Martian soil rising 15 meters high and running the perimeter around the 11 square mile footprint of the base, there were smaller walls ringing key structures within, making for crude ‘forts’ inside the perimeter, each with defense turrets and vehicle-sized subterranean tunnels connecting them to the other facilities.
The vehicle garages held the largest tank compliment on the planet by a factor of 3, and the airfield held over 100 frogs along with a scattering of other craft, plus a pair of grounded dropships that no longer had an orbital home to travel to or a means of refueling. Inside the four main compounds was the entire 98th infantry division, most of which was readying for internal combat, but one regiment was equipped with combat grade pressure suits and even now they were suiting up to take to the field and man a series of defense bunkers and trenches ringing the primary structures.
Large, geometric metal spike-balls littered the inner perimeter as well, preventing the passage of tanks through select geographic locations, with pit-like trenches covering other approaches to force any ground attack that made it past the outer wall defenses into designated approach vectors where the infantry backed up more defense turrets.
The four main buildings were large mounds of red dirt, under which the ‘city-structure’ extended well below ground level. Light bombardment wasn’t a threat, nor was the rogue tank shell, but sufficient orbital firepower could theoretically get through to the upper levels, which was why the command center in building 3 was situated at the very bottom of the structure…actually buried 50 meters beneath it, with a number of small personnel tunnels linking out to other sites in case evac was needed, so that the shielded structure wouldn’t become a tomb if the base was hit from orbit or a sufficiently large air strike.
It had been designed to survive a direct hit from a nuke, and General Marvin felt relatively secure, personally, but he worried for his men on the surface, knowing that Star Force wouldn’t attack without preparation. Their navy was second to none, and the rumored elite special forces they’d used to repel the Chinese 40 years ago had become the stuff of legend, popping up more recently in special ops roles, but Star Force’s military had never been known to hold a standing army, so the General was unsure what exactly to expect.
“Oh shit!” one of his staffers suddenly yelled out as his face went white with panic. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“Get a grip and report!” the General barked, standing up and walking over to the man, who was only able to point to his screen with a shaky finger.
“Shit,” Marvin repeated in a whisper as he saw the outline of one of the larger targets moving out of the sandstorm. “Main screen.”
The staffer transferred the image to the wall screen so everyone could see, with the size tags included, measuring the armored hulk around 50 meters tall as it walked out of a passing tendril of sand, eerily reminiscent of the AT-ATs that had invaded Hoth in Star Wars. In fact, Marvin was sure that movie was why half of his command staff seemed to be frozen with fear, which only amplified itself when the second monster emerged alongside the first half a kilometer back.
The General’s mind immediately went analytical, but his own sense of awe and dread was significant. The ‘walkers’ were thicker than the Star Wars version, with a bulky body elevated on equally thick legs, four in count if he was seeing correc
tly, and slightly set outside the main body, providing a more stable foothold than the tipable Hoth models. The most discerning feature was an identical head structure, making it clear to Marvin that Star Force had deliberately copied the science fiction design.
He silently admitted that the sheer intimidation factor was worth it, but he also knew that with their height these walkers would be able to fire over the top of the outer wall, and if they were true to the movie design, they’d have enough armor plating on them that they’d be tough to take down.
Star Force’s notorious naval armor strength reinforced that speculation, and the visuals that were becoming more and more clear with the passing sands suggested that they’d laid it on heavy. Even the leg joints appeared to be massive amounts of metal, actually bulging out like spheres which Marvin guessed was to protect their weak spots.
Before the General could speculate more the smaller contacts became visible and another wave of shock ran through the command staff. A part of his mind had expected AT-STs, but Star Force hadn’t been that keen on replicating the movie technology. These contacts were also ‘walkers’ but were the two-legged version in a myriad of designs. One that Marvin saw pacing the first AT-AT looked like a giant suit of armor, complete with legs, arms, and even a stubby head. Its movements looked almost Human, with a significant hip swing and arm carry that made it appear like a giant man encased in body armor.
Off to its right running a bit further back was a more mechanical version, with two spindly legs and no arms or head, just a boxy center body with weapon pods mounted on the outside at the shoulder joints…the spitting image of a battletech Mad Dog mech.
All around the feet of the two heavy walkers more and more of the mechs appeared coming out of the sandstorm, walking slowly and purposefully forward with even more contacts appearing on radar that hadn’t yet become visible to the camera. Two groups formed alongside the heavy walkers and split off laterally, running forward into flanking positions while the heavies came straight up the middle with a group of about a dozen escorts as a third heavy appeared on radar behind them.
Suddenly one of the tiny green dots on the base schematic map laid out on top of a touchscreen worktable a couple of meters to the General’s left flashed red for three seconds, then switched over to the solid color, indicating that one of the defense turrets on the west outer wall had just went offline.
“What was that?” he demanded, pointing to the map.
“Turret 19 is offline,” one of the staff reported.
“I can see that, what hit it?”
Another staffer with a headset flagged down the General’s attention. “Outpost 6 reports an explosion at the turret, but they couldn’t see what hit it over the wall.”
“Radar, are there any missiles airborne?”
“Negative.”
On the map board another defense turret flashed red.
“Sabotage?” his XO suggested under his breath. “Explosives planted prior to the assault by an infiltration team.”
Before Marvin could answer he was interrupted.
“General!” another staffer said, bringing up a different video recording from a side angle, taken by the northwest wall tower. It showed a panoramic of the Martian surface, too wide for a single camera lens. The staffer panned across it until the approaching enemy mechs were seen as small dots, then magnified the image and ran it through a few seconds of footage with the computer stopping on the designated frame.
Marvin stared at it, not believing his eyes. A segment of a faint line green line appeared from the base of the head, barely visible as a swirl of dust crossed in front of the heavy walker and reflected the laser beam, but the next few frames of footage caused everyone’s jaw to drop. The line of the laser beam began to glow blue/white, becoming instantly visible, dust or no, and illuminated even further in the form of a massive flash…then it was gone.
The staffer backed up the footage a few frames and froze the display screen on the height of the flash, with the entire laser line illuminated like a bolt of lightning.
All eyes that weren’t fixed on the screen turned towards the General, silently asking what he wanted them to do.
“Get the frogs into the air,” the General ordered, trying to keep his calm for the sake of his men. “Priority targets are those AT-ATs!”
A few heads turned and gave him disbelieving glances at his use of the Star Wars moniker, but the rest of the frozen control room staff snapped out of their haze and got to work. Marvin held his poise, though his insides were doing flips. The AT-ATs were just over 25 kilometers away and taking out his outer defense turrets with some kind of god-awful energy weapon. If that wasn’t bad enough, he knew that if those things got to the outer wall their heads would be able to shoot down into the base at will. They had to stop them before they got that far.
“Change in orders,” he added, regretting the decision immediately, but knowing that he had no other choice. “Deploy the tanks…all the tanks. We have to meet them in the field before those walkers can get to the wall.”
The lower ranking Brigadier General that served as his XO suddenly grabbed his arm, as if to stop him. “That’s suicide for them. Without the wall to narrow their lines our tanks won’t stand a chance.”
Marvin turned to look the other man in the eye, but there was no malice there, only regret. “At least they’ll have room to flank outside. If we wait they’ll be picked apart by those big guns.”
The XO relaxed his grip, but didn’t fully let go. “At least hold off until the aircraft have had their run. If they can’t at least wound those things, then there’s no reason to expect the tanks will, and it’ll be a lot harder for them to shoot the frogs at range. Let our tanks keep the cover of the wall for now. It’ll take those things a long time to get here, so there’s no need to rush.”
Marvin considered the suggestion, then nodded his head. “Belay that last. Make ready the tanks for an assault, but keep them inside the wall until I give the go ahead. Let’s see what type of armor these beasts are carrying.”
Another pair of turret icons went out on the tabletop, underscoring the magnitude of the approaching threat.
7
Warrant Officer Julia Peskin looked out the pressurized cockpit of her A-22 ‘frog,’ situated between four attached engines that pivoted to provide both lift thrust and forward/lateral momentum. Current the two widely spaced forward engines were tipped well forward, gaining the A-22 as much speed as it could manage as it and the 107 other such craft flew towards the approaching Star Force walkers across the 15 mile wide gap that was ever so slowly decreasing.
To the frogs, however, that distance wasn’t significant, and they would be engaging the enemy within minutes. Julia’s primary target had been tagged as the big starboard walker, which was even now, 10 miles away, visible on the horizon and growing in size by the second. The image ran a shiver of fear through Julia’s lithe body, making her feel like Luke Skywalker making a run against the AT-ATs on Hoth…and everyone knew how that turned out.
A flash of light crossed her peripheral vision as her target fired off another of the energy bursts at the base, less than 200 meters to her left. She blinked away the residual light in her retinas and focused on her target and the best approach angle to take on the behemoth, which would probably be a lateral strike against the largest cross section and well away from its big gun.
Feeling a bit psychic, tactical data flooded her cockpit monitor, indicating the exact attack vector she’d been visualizing, provided by her squadron commander. They’d hold to this line of flight until they came within 2 miles, then swing around to make the assault pass and unload all of their missiles into its side. If the attack worked, they would have time to fly back and reload for another run on the other heavy walker, and maybe even a strike at the third before the Star Force troops got to the base.
Gripping her controls through pressure suit gloves, Julia’s finger caressed the firing button, unsure of how much opposition th
ey would get on approach. Before any further doubts could worm their way into her mind a pirate signal cut through into her headset, as well as those for all the other frog pilots.
“This is Archon Ryan-096, commander of the Star Force ground troops you are currently flying to engage.”
“How the hell are they…?” she mumbled, wondering how they got through the encryption.
“We’re not here to kill you,” Ryan assured them. “We’re here to remove you from the planet and confiscate this base…along with all the other American, Japanese, British, German, West African, South African, and Indian territories on Mars. All those parties involved in this war are being kicked off the planet and back to Earth, we’re just starting with you because you’re the best. If we have to fight you for this base, our victory will encourage others to surrender without a fight, but I’d prefer we didn’t have to.”
Julia glanced at her rangefinder as the miles clicked off, wondering how far out the approaching walkers could target them.
“I know you have your orders, and that General Marvin doesn’t intend to surrender, but consider this carefully in the few minutes you have before you get within weapons range. We will have possession of this base by the end of the day, one way or another. The question is, will you live to see tomorrow? We will, I promise you. You have no idea the kind of trouble you’re flying into right now, and there is no chance for you to win, but you can still survive. Our objective is to secure the base and either remove you from the planet or escort you off if you leave voluntarily. That can be achieved without your deaths.”
“If you choose to blindly follow orders, I can’t make any promises for your survival. Our mechs aren’t equipped with nonlethal weapons like our ground troops usually carry, so it will be difficult to disable your flyers, and even if we do, you’ll drop to the ground and probably crack your atmospheric seals, leaving you with Mars’ inhospitable atmosphere to deal with, even if you are wearing pressure suits. If you survive the weapons fire and the crash, manage to pull yourself out of your cockpits and escape any internal explosions, you’ll have a limited oxygen supply, assuming you didn’t suffer any tears in your suit.”
