by Kali Altsoba
***
Two first-rate RIK combat brigades occupy the critical space between Madjenik and where it wants to go, to the berm and through the Gate, thence over the sole bridge into Toruń. They look rested and heavily armed, with big armor and arti support locked in place all around.
‘They must have skycraft, too, but flying high over the berm and shields to keep clear of our archie and streak missiles. This close in, at least we don’t have to worry about Jabos and Raptor strafers, not so close to their own guys.’ Cold comfort, but the only morsel Jan can find.
His logic is correct. Raptors and Jabos are holding back for now. But not just to avoid friendly fire incidents along the berm. They’ve taken real losses since they switched from runs over the open northern plain then the five Old Forest Roads. Archie is so thick around Toruń the bombardment of the city is being left to long-range artillery, dug in 500 klics back, far beyond any KRA ability to reply. And to even longer-range missiles fired from thousands of klics away on Southland. Some ice kinetics fall from orbit, lobbed from fast destroyers that dart-and-dash low. But the Kaigun is wary of the big Toruń batteries. It’s been hurt too badly by them already.
The main damage is to RIK Skyforce. It took too many losses in the first cocky days of bombing, as pilots predicting “an easy match” flew low and straight over a cleared fire-zone all around the outside berm. They paid a high price for arrogance in downed Jabos making jellied landings smeared over the forest floor. Many were happy to be called south to pound Pilsudski Wood and the Gold Oak Forest, looking to roast ‘bandits’ for an angry Oetkert general. Then they firebombed the five Old Forest Roads, turning a half million square klics of forest to ash.
Ultimately, they were ordered back to Toruń. Again they attacked, again they paid a high price against a determined fortress city with anti-skycraft guns on every rooftop and more atop the berm. A pair every 50 paces. Suddenly the war was a lot less fun. Fewer pilots returned to barracks for each end-of-day meal. They were replaced by rookies, who crashed even faster.
Otherwise, the siege is going all the Rikugun’s way. At least if, like the worried generals reporting daily success to Pyotr, you consider as success scaling walls and ramparts of your own dead. All around the berm bodies wait in unburied heaps, kept from rotting by suspend but piled with indignity beside larger piles of scorched and broken gear, caved-in armtraks, smashed gun tubes and stalled ambition. Next rush will make the breach, a general says. Or the one after that. Toruń’s fall and burning is inevitable. Only that hope and expectation keeps up conscript morale, as indifferent generals foolhardily leave their own dead exposed for their men to see and worry.
Madjenik is dog-tired, too. It has 15 walking wounded hobbling along only with aid from a reserve of just 50 fighters. The worst-off smell of gauze and scabs and anti-biots, pus and piss and bone-weariness. The only thing working on Jan’s side at this last hour of the long trek is that his worn-out, outgunned and wildly outnumbered fighters are as yet undiscovered by the enemy.
He’s trying hard not to admit his doubts about himself or Madjenik’s chances, but he’s not succeeding. He hasn’t felt this utterly helpless and without hope in three months. Not since the first time he saw combat and ran, wounded and scared and forevermore ashamed. Hauling himself before his own Court of Character to pass merciless sentence on himself as a coward.
He’s not a coward, but he’s no fool either. Ahead lies an immovable obstacle in the berm, and an irresistible force of RIK besiegers all around the perimeter, as far as his HUD can detect or count. Yet there’s no going back. Not into the ashland of Toruń Wood. Jan’s fate is a one-way street that leads the Wreckers to Toruń or Death. He knows it. He hesitates to step onto the path.
‘How the hell do I get us through? It’s just not possible. It can’t be done. Not with that huge force standing between us and Toruń, and the path to the bridge and the Gate so narrow.’
It’s Jan’s worst nightmare coming true. All the proof anyone will ever need that he’s no officer, that he should never have been given command of Madjenik. That whenever he’s called upon to save his soldiers and lead his company he fails miserably and everybody dies.
‘I’m going to kill all these fighters I led through the forest. How can I not? I’m going to get Zofia killed, too, right here at the feet of Toruń. Right here, at the berm. With all of Genève and Krevo and all Orion watching. Everything has been for naught. This will be my greatest failure yet. If we attack, we’ll die. Maybe I should just surrender Madjenik instead, to save it?’
Zofia seems to read his thoughts, and won’t accept them: “Godsdamn it captain! Snap out of it! All of Madjenik has followed you here. This was your idea, your plan. You did it. You got us here when we all thought we were going to die in fire and ash. Well fuck you, Jan Wysocki! None of us came this far to watch you falter and fail. So get off your ass and get us into the city.”
“Ah hell, Zofia,” he says after a long silence follows her outburst. It’s the first time since the sweetgrass that he’s called her by her name and not her rank.
“It’s better to die on our feet than to live on our knees. Call the NCOs. Tell them to get Madjenik ready. We’re going to attack.”
Epilogue
Eight hundred parsecs away, an Intelligence broods on the outbreak of war in the Orion spiral arm. A thick grasping organ with long digits and a bright metallic glint reaches out to a gossamer light display, more gaseous than hard. It flicks subtly, and a time-delayed image of the Minister of Defense of the Calmar Union, Georges Briand, addressing a full Lok Sabra on Kars shuts off. It came all this way via superluminal hyper bohr relay, but still. The distance is …
The image from Kars is replaced by a swirling starmap of the Orion spur and Open Clusters, curving in the far distance from where the Intelligence watches on the cusp of the outer, stately and more majestic Perseus spiral arm.
More majestic, yes, but vastly more troubled and troublesome. Still, the decision is made. A powerful fusion drive engages on a warship unlike any seen in history. At least, not in Orion’s history. At least, not in human history.
It streaks toward a gas giant L2 in a quiet system in the outer edge of the long Perseus arm, the last three-body system before mostly emptiness and solitary wanderer stars reach toward the distant Boreads. That starry archipelago floats adjacent to the extreme far western Gap lying between Orion and the first wispy stars of the main Perseus conglomeration. If it wasn’t there, the middle passage could not be crossed. But it is there, so a warship will jump The Gap to reach Orion. There will be many more to follow. Many, many more.
It’s going to be a long trip to reach the human homeworlds. It’s over 24,000 trillion klics just to make The Boreads. It won’t be far enough to keep humans unaware of a far more terrible war that’s already been raging for 10,000 years across Perseus, an interminable war of attrition between two ancient alien civilizations. Remarkably, unknown to either of the great warring races a hidden third civilization watches them, as it watches The Gap between the spiral arms.
The Intelligence sends a final message relay-bohring back to central Perseus, then it engages an exquisitely refined quantum stadimeter. Not without a touch of wry humor, it thinks: ‘Well, aren’t you humans in for a real surprise.’
Appendix
Imperium ranks followed Broderbund practice until the First Orion War, which is to say there were no officer ranks. All commanders were called ‘Brothers’ or ‘Knights’ and all soldiers were classed as either basic infantry (landser) or clone slaves (dāsa). Rikugun no longer uses slave soldiers. The term landser survives.
Rikugun terminology changed with martial marriage of the original Oetkert-Shaka dynasty with the elites of Nagoya and Yokohama, after the First Orion War. By the time of the Second Orion War, all officer ranks were Nagoyan.
Rikugun (Grün Army) ranks
field marshal gensui taishō
lt. general chūjō
major general shōsh�
�
general taishō
colonel taisa
lt. colonel chūsa
major shōsa
captain taii
1st lieutenant chūi
2nd lieutenant shōi
sergeant gunsō
corporal gochō
---------------
senior private jōtōhei
private/recruit nitōhei
basic infantry landser
slave soldiers dāsa
Special Action Commando (SAC)
Sakura-kai (Cherry Blossoms Society)
SAC uses same rank structure as Rikugun
Coming next
Volume II
The Orion War
Exodus
Sample:
Exodus
The three Alpha warships shift on cue to “Formation Bodkin,” an elongated tetrahedron, an imagined three-dimensional triangle of ships with no base. A third of the way from the top, tucked tightly in behind Resolve, the lumbering transports fly recklessly close and side-by-side.
Four older enemy frigates hold steady course at one-eighth speed, daring a straight dash by leaving no yawning space between their line and the start of the L2 area. Not moving so slowly as to be tactically “standing still in the water.” Alpha maintains course, heading straight for the Kaigun line also at half speed. Like two wild boars readying for a fight at the waterhole.
Relative distance closes fast, but not so fast that the opposing forces are denied use of all forward weapons systems. A lucent image blooms on Émile Fontaine’s holomap, which tracks all object positions and velocity vectors. A bright red dot appears suddenly, measurably in front of dull red cuboids marking position and speed of the four frigates. The dot is traveling much, much faster than the warships. Three more red dots appear nearby in quick succession.
A high-pitched, nervous and young male voice calls out from Weapons Station. “Fish in the sea! Torpedoes! One, two, three, four! Four missiles dead ahead and incoming fast.”
“What kind?”
“They move like silver streaks, ma’am.”
Those have smaller plasma chambers but much longer-range VASIMR drives. They sacrifice detonation power of a smaller plasma chamber to store fuel for longer burning engines.
“Confirmed by speed and approach pattern. They’re hunter-seekers, newest models!”
Fontaine instinctively looks up and out the Main Scuttle, a wide window of transparent armor strong and thick enough to catch and embed even sizeable micrometeorites. Matching the red dots moving on his holoscreen are four streaking white lights, refulgent to the eye rather than passively lambent like their pale representatives in his holo-projection. Extraocular muscles hurt just a little before the viewport rapidly darkens in response to the sudden external candescence.
“Resolve, Asimov, Tyco Brae, all on my mark, shoot canister then reposition. Shoot all you’ve got. Hold nothing back. Warsaw and Jutlandia, cleave to the interior position. Do not deviate! All ships jig formation up 5̊ on my mark. Stand by.”
Looming brilliances grow bigger in Resolve’s darkened Main Scuttle. Then one-by-one they wink out as VASIMR engines shut down when even their plasma-drive fuel is exhausted.
Fontaine advises from his station. “Their commander’s nervous. He fired too early, at extreme range even for hunter-killers. Trying to score first by trusting to AI guidance from the warheads, but miscalculating thrusters. They’re on inertial guidance, heading for this position.”
“Not a bad gamble,” Aklyan grudgingly admits. ‘It might work, too. Those are up-to-date seekers, even if the frigates are too old.’
Darkened to naked vision as plasma plumes extinguish, vaporless weapons whizz toward the five ships of Formation Bodkin at max velocity. Steering nozzles fire minimally or not at all, holding until target is acquired and locked. Alpha has yet to engage evasives, so very intelligent targeting computers in the warheads wait for the move they know must be coming. Wait before instructing ceramic nozzles to steer intercept corrections. And wait, and wait, ever closer...
“Shoot gravel! Jig up 5̊ on my mark. Mark!”
Three expanding disks totaling more than ten million ceramic pellets each spew from the pyramid of warships forming the top of the Alpha tetrahedron. The disks form widening cones as rail gunners hold the streams for a full 10-second burst, exhausting all dewlap gravel bins. Five ships move as one, “up” precisely 5̊ before leveling out again on the same straight-ahead course.
Aklyan’s timing is near-perfect. AIs in the warheads engage nozzles and turn sharply to match Alpha’s sudden evasion, but one tube and the plasma charge it hosts inside a compact magnetic chamber shreds as it meets the spreading edge of a wide-dispersing cone. AIs wail into nothingness as one prematurely freed plasma ball becomes a frantic nova, and wrecks them too.
Weapons Station on Resolve reports. “All four Kölns are reloading forward tubes.” The voice is calmer than before the missiles were destroyed, three still intact when caught inside the plasma burst of the first. It disintegrated their outer tubes but didn’t break open their magnetic containments. Little balls of blue hate go tumbling away. They’ll fly on for an eternity, until they give out and blossom eons hence above some far-off world. A curious flash in an alien sky?
Fontaine calls over. “They don’t have time to get off a second shot. They’ve screwed up their forward reload! Careful, they’ll shoot aft tubes for sure as we turn past them.” Weapons Station handles all upcoming shooting angles, but Fontaine in Chart House is also monitoring relative velocity and distance and potential tracks of all ships on both sides.
Weps again. “The gravel spread should be reaching the frigates about now.” So it does, but so diffuse as it arrives that almost none of the tiny balls hit home. Those few that do hit cause little damage. “No effect. They’re still holding the line.”
Prows and bridges of older-class frigates like the Kölns are protected by carbyne-dodgers that absorb all the little hits, vaporizing the pellets. They weren’t built to handle canister but to stop micrometeorites. Still, they’re good enough at these low speeds as arriving canister lacks sufficient velocity to break or even much damage the heavy dodgers.
‘Gravel’ can’t be used as an effective offensive weapon at the relative low closing speeds of these two groups of opposing ships. Not like when Captain Archambault used it in a combined 0.4 light-speed mutual charge on the windward side of Genève system’s lone gas giant. Aklyan expects nothing more than what she gets. She fired the canister defensively to shred an incoming spread of Kaigun missiles, not to take out the frigates that fired them.
“Coming up to the first turn. On my mark, all ships shoot forward lasers. Rotate to short-range plasma as we come out of inflection ... Mark!”
Repeating slices of intense red and blue light shoot from a dozen lasers around the edges of the tetrahedron, searching black space ahead for the Kaigun frigates. Streaks of lethal light are joined a few seconds later by two glowing green balls, then two more, and two more after that as Alpha’s warships engage with intermediate-range plasma-cannon.
More bolts and light streaks burst, following an exacting curve through the first leg of a sharp ‘S’ maneuver Alpha is attempting. Warsaw and Jutlandia huddle in the protective wake of the three leading warships, like whale calves seeking safety inside the protection of the pod.
Weapons Stations consoles and holos on every ship erupt in brilliant, streaking vector lights as the four Kaigun warships return fire. Battle is engaged. Prismatic beams shoot from laser batteries of twisting warships on both sides, missing or hitting as luck and skill decide, along with AI targeting systems and ship and missile vectors and relative distances, angles and velocities. Mathematics is more important than any tactics now, but human skill and courage count for something too. It’s not all physics and machines.
Three red rays from Resolve glance off strong plate armor of the Kaigun flagship, KG Karlsruhe. The daisa on the frigate rolls his ship as it
scuds by Alpha, shooting each battery he has on the uproll. Undamaged by Resolve, he hammers back with all available lasers as the next Krevan ship enters clear electronic sights of his targeting computers. He’s really good.
“A godsdamn buckaroo,” Aklyan swears under her breath. “Just what we didn’t need.”
