by James Rosone
Another building was nearly completed; it would be six stories tall, with two subbasement levels. This one was meant to house the colonist workers, and would include a medical facility, cafeteria, communications room and a recreation room. Once completed, it would have room for up to 300 people. Each building was connected by a series of tunnels that enabled the workers to move between buildings and airlocks without having to suit up and leave the facility to enter another one. Though the structure of these edifices had been completed and sealed, it would still be months before the electrical wiring, heating, cooling, water and recycling systems were completed. Each building also had multiple airlocks, which were used for moving materials in and out of storage areas of the facility.
The various engineers estimated that it would be close to two more months until the remaining housing facilities were completed and the additional personnel could start arriving from Earth. Dr. Bergstrom was enjoying his work on the Moon immensely, but his heart ached to see his family. He had hoped that once the new housing structure was completed, he might be able to arrange for his family to move here to be with him. Unfortunately, the answer he was given was “no.” They simply did not have enough room yet to allow people to bring their families with them. Right now, people assigned to the Pegasus Project were expected to serve a one-year term with a 30-day R&R at the six-month mark.
Dr. Bergstrom had been conducting intensive surveys and soil sampling of the Moon, identifying in detail what minerals and resources were located at different points across the lunar surface. Others in his research group were working on designing several heavy factories that would, in time, refine the materials being mined and fabricate additional building materials needed to expand the colony and build additional spacecraft. The construction crew was already hard at work assembling the foundation for multiple new buildings and an adjoining tram system that would link all of the buildings together. It was a massive undertaking, and would take years to complete. Several of the new housing structures were going to be 40 stories in height. The colony would then be able to house around 12,000 people, and would only grow from there.
Heavy deposits of iron, tungsten, copper, magnesium, aluminum and most importantly, water were found in abundance just below the Moon’s surface. There was also Tritium4 and Helium3 isotopes in heavy concentrations. Most of the minerals were relatively close to the growing colony. The long-term goal was to get the various mining operations up and running and build out the factories, refineries, and fabrication facilities needed to make the colony self-sufficient. Eventually, they would be in a position to start constructing equipment for larger space exploration and colonization ships.
Karl enjoyed his work immensely; he was now the world’s leading geologist and the man leading humanity into the stars in search of new minerals and opportunities for humanity to spread beyond Earth. His position had grown beyond just geological work; he was now among the leadership of the colony and a member of the space exploration committee, which was headed by Dr. Peter Gorka, the President’s Chief Scientist. His ideas and suggestions for how America should explore space and what needed to be done to accomplish those goals were being heeded and implemented.
While he felt like he was making a difference for humanity, he felt his family life was starting to suffer immensely. He had been sequestered to work on the Pegasus Project for nearly six years now, only seeing his family for short bursts on weekends, holidays and their yearly vacation. In that time, he had poured his heart and soul into space exploration and mining. While his wife understood his passion and what he was doing for humanity, his children did not. All they knew was that their daddy worked 80 hours a week and was gone for weeks and sometimes months on end. His living on the Colony for a year was really stretching his relationship with his children. His son was seventeen and a senior in high school. He was a smart kid, and all of his classes were now AP classes that he was completing through a dual enrollment homeschooling program with Liberty University. His daughter was sixteen, and like her brother, was also a bit of a prodigy. Both of his kids were well on their way to attending some of the best universities in the world. His son wanted to go into physics, his daughter wanted to be a doctor. He wanted so much to be there for them while they were going through this pivotal time in their lives, but long-distance fatherhood of teenagers was proving to be quite challenging.
Karl was due to head back to Earth in four months, just in time for his son’s eighteenth birthday and graduation from high school. What his son and wife did not know, is that Karl had been working behind the scenes to get his son an internship with Dr. Gorka’s research assistant, Dr. Nikki Travosky. She was scheduled to take his place at the Colony when his one year assignment was completed. Nikki was a leading physicist and was working on developing the next generation in EmDrive propulsion that would allow humanity to explore well beyond the solar system. He was pulling some connections and leveraging his position on the President’s science team to get his son into the MIT Physics program. Because his son had completed so many college credits through his dual enrollment program, he would go to MIT as a sophomore. His internship with Dr. Travosky would give his son an edge over all other students in the same program. He wanted to surprise his son with all of this when he arrived back home in four months. Of course, his wife would kill him once she found out their son’s internship would place him on the lunar surface at the colony, but what an experience it would give his son. He hoped this would do something to bridge the divide that grown between him and his son.
Whose Side are We on?
20 December 2042
Pretoria, South Africa
African Confederation Headquarters
President Aliko Dangote was starting to grow a bit concerned about his Chinese allies. The recent change in leadership within the Russian Federation had given him pause, and was causing him and some of his military leaders and advisors to question the longer-term feasibility of their relationship with China. With the Allies now focused completely on China, it was only a matter of time until the Chinese economy collapsed and their military was destroyed. The Americans had been attacking dozens of key bridges and damns across the Chinese interior, which was starting to wreak havoc on their ability to govern and maintain control of their population of more than two billion people.
Then there was the war in Africa. The Americans and Europe had not taken an active interest in it just yet, and Dangote wanted to make sure they did not. The Chinese insisted that Dangote continue the war in the Horn of Africa, Central Africa and the Gold Coast. What Dangote himself wanted most was to work on integrating the half of the continent that he currently controlled. The Chinese had been using his soldiers to carry out a genocide of the Horn of Africa; from the reports that he had been receiving from his generals, they were killing nearly everyone that lived in Somalia and Sudan. He tried to concentrate on the bright spots. The war in Cameroon was finally winding down, and his forces had finished off what was left of the government forces there. The war in Nigeria was turning into a stalemate.
President Dangote had been a good soldier. However, he was going to go against his Chinese puppet masters soon. He was going to start working on a peace with the Nigerians after the New Year. His goal was to bring an end to the fighting by February. His forces and the Chinese had two and a half months left to accomplish their tasks before he would unilaterally call an end to the war. He was President of the largest country in the world, but his hold on the country was tenuous at best. On paper, he controlled more than half of the continent; in actuality, he really only controlled the major cities, ports, and mining and oil fields. He needed to produce a functioning government and law and order if he was going to maintain power, and that was not going to happen if his people continued to stay at war.
As Aliko Dangote sat at his mahogany desk in the massive Presidential office, he knew he was going to have to reach out to the Americans soon. He hit the buzzer near his desk for his secretary to respond. A
second later a voice came over the speaker, “Can I help you with something, Sir?”
“Please arrange a meeting with my Foreign Secretary.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The meeting had more than one purpose. He planned to make his Foreign Secretary the new American Ambassador. Their current Ambassador was going to be coming home shortly; he had done a good job of keeping the African Confederation low profile and out of the spotlight, but now it was time to begin serious talks with the Americans. Dangote wanted to prevent them from waging their war on his continent. A war he knew he could not win was one that he wanted to avoid at all costs.
Thompson’s Last Mission
03 January 2043
1,200 feet under the East China Sea
Captain Thompson was on his last combat patrol as the Commander of the Seawolf. He had just received word that he was being promoted to Rear Admiral and would be taking over command of the navy’s submarine training squadron. It was a non-combat role, but one that would give him two years of shore duty and time with his family. It would also position him for his second star, so from that perspective, he thought it was going to be a great assignment.
His ship had survived multiple enemy engagements this year, and as a crew, had the most tonnage sunk of any US submarine. They sunk one of the Chinese Supercarriers (and one of the Japanese carriers) and damaged the others enough that it proved to be a turning point in the battle for Hawaii. Everyone on his ship had been awarded the Bronze Star with V device for Valor. He was given the opportunity to award ten members of the ship the Silver Star and had also presented two Navy Crosses. Captain Thompson himself had been awarded the Navy Cross as the commander of the sub. For their last patrol with him as commander, they had been ordered into the East China Sea, about eighty miles northeast of Shanghai, just off the coast of Qingdao, one of the largest shipping ports in the country.
With Japan neutralized and now functioning as a launch pad for the coming invasion, the Allies were now moving more and more subs and ships into the East and South China Seas, to begin locking down their ports. The Navy had finally cut the Chinese shipping lanes off from the rest of the world and their other captured territories. The Allies had been working hard to cut China off from Africa and the island nations of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. They did not plan on liberating the Philippines or invading Indonesia. Instead, their plan was to isolate them and conduct surgical air strikes against their forces to degrade them over time.
The Seawolf was given the mission of launching a series of cruise missiles at the port and then slipping away to return to their base of operations in Japan. As his sub came to launch depth, he looked at his XO and said, “Ready the missiles, I want to launch them as quickly as possible so we can get out of here.”
“Yes, Sir,” the XO responded.
Captain Thompson continued, “COB, once the missiles have launched, I want us to dive to 900 feet and begin to move away from here at eight knots.”
“Ay, Ay, Sir,” replied the COB.
Turning to his weapons officer, the Captain simply nodded, indicating it was time.
Then he announced, “Fire all missiles.”
It only took seconds, but then the ship shuddered slightly as the blast doors began to blow and a series of cruise missiles began to be ejected from the missile bays. Every three seconds, another blast door opened as a cruise missile was launched, until all sixteen had been fired.
Immediately following the launch of the missiles, the sub began a steep dive, picking up speed until it reached eight knots. “Conn, Sonar--do we have any contacts?” asked the Captain, hoping they were going to make a clean get-away.
There was a pause as they waited for the update. Petty Officer Wilks was listening intensely to his headset and watching the computer screen in front of him. They had not heard any Chinese subs in the last two days, but that did not mean they were not out there. A few minutes later the Captain called asking for an update. “Sonar, Conn--we are not showing enemy submarines in the area,” Wilks said to the Captain.
They all breathed a sigh of relief. Launching their cruise missiles was probably one of the most vulnerable positions a sub could be in.
*******
Twenty minutes after firing their cruise missiles, the Captain was fairly certain they had not been detected, so he ordered the ship to increase speed to 12 knots and deploy the towed sonar array. If an enemy submarine was out there, then chances are the towed array would be able to find them. It looked like his final combat mission of the war was a success.
Maps and Schemes
09 February 2043
Yokota Air Base, Japan
General Gardner’s Headquarters
Following the coup in Japan, the US Military quickly backed the coup leaders and helped the military seize control of the government and the country. The Chinese, of course, had their own response to the situation. The PLA had 35,000 soldiers in Japan, and those soldiers did their best to attack the government forces and try to hold on to the few military bases they operated on. The PLAAF also sent additional aircraft into the mix. After nearly three months of fighting, the US and the remaining JDF that supported the coup were able to push the PLA off the island. The US Navy put a lot of effort into preventing the PLAN from bringing in more reinforcements; the US lost a lot of ships attacking the remains of the PLAN, but after months of naval engagements, the US had defeated what was left of the Chinese navy and reasserted their dominance of the Pacific.
After the Chinese and Axis powers had been defeated in California and Alaska, General Gardner had been promoted again and given his fifth star. He had now been given overall command of all Allied forces in the Pacific. The last four months had been busy; the US had ferried over a million soldiers and supporting equipment to Japan. With the steady supply of Tritium4, the US had been cranking out F41s as fast as they could. The Air Force now had one 187 of them operating in Japan. They had quickly established air control over Japan and the East China Sea.
General Gardner’s forces in Japan had now reached 1,400,000 soldiers, and were still growing. There was still some resistance domestically from holdouts of the previous government, but they were being hunted down and dealt with. What Gardner wanted to focus on now was how best to invade China and bring a swift end to the war. He was concerned with the casualty numbers, and the last thing he wanted to do was lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Of the soldiers that he had in Japan, nearly 230,000 of them were equipped with the Raptor exoskeleton combat suits. He also had 12,000 of the new enhanced humanoid drones and 4,000 trained operators ready to use them.
Intelligence and surveillance of the major cities and probably landing zones of mainland China showed a massive increase in activity. The Chinese were building up their shoreline, and appeared to be turning their cities into fortresses. This was the exact fight General Gardner wanted to avoid. He grumbled to himself, “No one wants to fight in a city; it favors the defenders and it is a lot harder to root out the enemy. Unless I were willing to flatten all the buildings and kill the civilians in them, fighting in a city is going to cost us a lot of lives… I have to find a way to cut China up into manageable chunks.”
He opened a map on his tablet and began strategizing. Shanghai was the first region of concern that he identified; there were nearly eighteen million people living in that metropolis and surrounding area. Intelligence showed the PLA had moved nearly 600,000 soldiers into the area to defend it as well. His second goal was the port city of Qingdao and the rest of the peninsula. Next, he planned to liberate Taiwan. This would allow him to position aircraft, troops and supplies a lot closer to southern China. He also wanted to capture Tianjin, which would put his forces in striking distance of Beijing. The real question was--where should he attack first? Fighting was going to be heavy in all four areas; he needed to figure out where to use the Raptor soldiers and EHDs versus regular infantry wearing standard body armor.
It was still dicey providing air su
pport to the infantry. The F41s could operate at a higher altitude and because of their speed and stealth, the enemy laser and Surface to Air Missile (SAM) batteries were useless against them. The F41s were attacking every laser battery they could find, but they were never going to get them all…the PLA had tens of thousands of SAMs, not to mention shoulder-fired missiles, which were also able to pack a punch. In either case, the invasion was going to be costly.
******
General Tyler Black walked into the operations center and went straight for the coffee stand. He had been awake for nearly twenty hours after visiting several of the battalions of newly-arrived soldiers. He had made it a point to spend at least three days a week touring the various battalions, talking to the soldiers, sergeants and junior officers to get a feel for the mood of the soldiers and their morale. He tried to offer words of encouragement and give them hope that the war was finally ending. He told them the President and General Gardner were in negotiations with the Chinese government, but if they did not surrender, he expected them to do their duty and bring this war to an end.
The war in Alaska had taken a lot from General Black. He had lost so many soldiers, and ultimately, they still lost. If it had not been for the Navy, they might still be fighting the Chinese there. He wanted payback for the invasion of America. He wanted payback for the Chinese providing all the weapons to the IR and starting this war. Too many young men and women had died. Too many more were still going to die if President Stein ordered them to invade.
