by Kali Altsoba
The pattern holds on the Twins, though there’s some resistance and greater destruction of their larger populations and urban centers. More defeat comes on two lightly defended Calmari border systems taken by surprise and by overwhelming weight of Dauran numbers. An oversized but technologically-underequipped invasion meets solid opposition on Portus Cale, but prevails once an extreme terror tactic is used: indiscriminate nuclear bombardment of ten cities. Over 300 million civilian dead and shrouds of radiation break the back of the ground resistance.
The garrison commander orders all white plasma cannon in the spaceyard rigged for three hours of AI-bot auto fire, then self-destruction. The last 200,000 ACU use the window to pull out in a lightening convoy dash for Minotaur, flying a swarm of 26 troopships at All-Bendix past a startled DRN admiral, then down the huge lava-tube mouths into Swiftburn’s Cavern and other interior ship parks, to shelter deep under the surface. There’s heavy fighting on the moon still.
Minotaur is holding on more than it’s holding out. Portus Cale’s airless moon is a swiss cheese of a place, all red-and-black lava a billion years old, filled with carved religious relics and echoes of all the oddball engineers who hollowed it out, and odder researchers who lived inside its caves and sealed-off lava tubes. Its defenders are cut-off and losing, but defiant in the face of arrival of all Dauran forces in the system after the homeworld surface settles under atomic dust.
Now Magda Aklyan is on her way to Minotaur with a new squadron dubbed Task Force Wildfire. Hitching a ride in its troopships is 10th Commando Brigade. Minotaur is pounded, its defenses breaking. Another world is falling. So of course, Wysocki’s Wreckers are on the way. They must love losing.
Wildfire
Immediately after arriving on Harsa, the War Government decides to maintain KRA and KRN unit organization by homeworld, even when there aren’t enough troops to fill out a division or ships to make a full squadron or fleet. Genève Squadron is re-formed under the command of Captain Magda Aklyan. Mission-tagged as Task Force Wildfire, it’s a much larger force. In her mind, however, Wildfire is wrapped around the seven small Alpha warships that got her here.
She has all nine captains from disbanded Alpha, including the two troopships, which she also retains. Wildfire has five light cruisers transferred from Aral Squadron: Reckless, Renown, Revenge, Retribution, and Redoubtable. She also gets eight older frigates from Brno Squadron and best of all, three heavy cruisers from Lwów Squadron: Phuong, Bao Ninh and Viêt. It’s all that can be done for now. She’ll have to do without battleships. There’s an acute shortage.
There’s controversy behind the scenes over jumping her to command so enlarged a force, but her record at the Genève Moons and The Gauntlet shines through when the Naval Committee looks it over. It recommends her to the War Government, which is determined to put fighters in charge of the few assets it has left. It brushes criticism and bruised admiral egos aside. Besides, she’s the most senior officer left from Genève, discounting Archambault and Tiva, who are only longer-serving and clearly no match for her skill at tactics or her ability to lead. Especially Tiva.
She could move her flag to one of the heavy cruisers, but chooses to stay for now on the destroyer Resolve. She’ll get five older troopships still under repair at Harsa, and maybe more new warships down the line. They’ve been commissioned by the War Government, but are held up in bitter naval appropriations debates in the Lok Sabra and the Joint Cabinet on Kars, which is badly divided over whether to support Krevans more directly or maintain strict neutrality toward the Krevan War. There’s a month to go before the Dual Powers attack over the eastern borders.
Also being repaired at the Harsa yards are six badly-damaged KRN heavy cruisers, 16 holed destroyers, and nine frayed frigates from half the occupied-worlds. No decision has been made on whether to give these to Wildfire or form more task forces. It depends on whether the War Government wants to commit to an old-style fleet-to-fleet engagement or conduct raids.
The decision is being driven by the assets KRN has available. There are thousands of cargo carriers and large civilian craft crowded into the space directly over Harsa. Even more at the other sanctuaries, and still more at over half-a-hundred Calmar Union worlds where many tens of thousands of Little Ships arrived hell bent and pell-mell, to the great consternation of Sanjay Pradip and umbrage of Robert Hoare and at least half the Joint Cabinet on Kars, which feared provoking Pyotr to anger.
The government-in-exile has big plans for the Little Ships. The best will be converted into compact marine assault-craft for commando raids and missions yet to be defined, and yet to come, across Imperium borders. None of them are military grade, but up-armored and at at least minimally armed, together they might form a swarm of fast troop-transports and attack-boats the KRN desperately needs if the war is not to peter out into permanent defeat. All are bohr-capable and quite a few of the private craft are in-system fast. Military-grade fast. Better, smuggler fast.
Secret work is underway on tens of thousands of Little Ships, now that the final Exodus fleet is leaving to ferry the last tens of millions of civilians from the lazy Twins and three other holdout worlds in the farthest-away, easternmost systems. KRN is reassembling and reorganizing the majority that stay at gravity-neutral LPs and along elevator wharves in the five sanctuaries.
Where it can hide activity from local NCU Authority inspectors, as on two of the five sanctuary moons where it controls the spaceyards, the War Government is arming the fastest Little Ships. Some already have a single fire-and-forget torpedo slung underneath their hull. Others sport twinned plasma cannon above their tiny Bridges, almost like carrier fighters for a tiny navy that has no carriers. Second-tier types, not as fast, are fitted as LP stealth mine-layers. All are all getting fresh KRN carbyne-paint jobs and stenciled escutcheons on sides and tail fins.
As more arrive every day, the orbital lanes at Harsa become so overcrowded that gazing up from Livy the Little Ships look in reflected sunlight like a halo around the moon. At least they do to romantics and Old Believers. But those kind of people can see a halo in a doughnut! Locals are less impressed. They call them “the godsdamn parking lot from hell.” Harsa is determined to use them as attack-boats in small but bloody ground assaults, such as three already made against Koblenz, Huertgen and Zug. They were test-runs for an emerging naval doctrine, a new way to use very small-scale naval assets in murderous harassment KRN calls “butcher-and-bolt” raids.
They’ll also serve to train replacement crews for the warship fleets. The inspiration came from Alpha, from demonstration at The Gauntlet of what could be done with civilian ships converted from liners into the armed troopships, Warsaw and Jutlandia. Already, surface yards are full of sounds of hammered metal, molding of carbyne-sheets, welding of armor plate, testing engines and lasers and cannon. This war will last a long time if Krevans have any say.
***
Neither Wildfire nor Wysocki’s Wreckers are meant to go into the fight on Minotaur, but that’s where they’ll end up after Magda Aklyan pulls out of Harsa and departs Nova Cincinnatus, taking her new and expanded command to NCU Base Orestes. That’s to be Wildfire’s new home base, by secret agreement between Admiral Maçon and the War Government. The cover story is that Wildfire will conduct joint training-missions with the NCU squadron. The real story is that Harsa offered its ships and guns to Defense Minister Georges Briand, bypassing Prime Minister Robert Hoare on Kars. Briand and Maçon have agreed to let Genève Squadron, as represented by Wildfire, join stepped-up border patrols looking for Kaigun phantoms reported over the border.
Wreckers and the Rusty Buckles are sent away with Wildfire, dispatched to Orestes for advanced commando training but also just to get them off Harsa. Too many troopers have been too drunk too often, and are spending too much time in the local jails and hospitals recovering from bar brawls. Tension between Krevans and Calmari is rising in all the sanctuaries along the frontier with the Imperium as Wildfire leaves for Orestes with barely half-sobe
r troops on board. It departs nine days before the fateful meeting of the Joint Cabinet on Kars coincides with the stunning Dual Power invasions of the eastern systems of Krevo and the Union in ‘The Balcony.’
The trip outbound is uneventful, since Wildfire cruises inside protected space of a Power that’s still neutral in the Krevan War with the Imperium. Wreckers travel in comfort this time. Or at least, the Brigade and Rusty Buckles are in less crimped-and-crowded quarters than last time. It’s also nice not to have Kaigun cruisers shooting broadsides as you pass, and a raptor flock of hostile Zerstörers trying to catch you from behind while more block egress from the bohr-zone.
10th Commando Brigade is berthed on Jutlandia, one of two capacious prewar liners converted to KRN troopships. They were first refitted in haste at Toruń Shipyard, then with more time at much better facilities at Harsa. Fighters have oodles of room as just two other battalions are onboard. The rest of The Buckles or 1st Division is on refitted Warsaw. Soldiers relax the whole trip, legs up or playing gyan chauperor or senet. Feeling rather chuffed about it all.
Actually, the troopships aren’t comfortable. It just seems that way after double-bunking for a multiple-bohrs trip from Genève to Harsa inside cramped frigates, jury-rigged to haul infantry in every lazaret and cofferdam. “Packed as tight as fucking mockfish on a one-timer to some backwater asteroid or oort-cloud mining colony.” Well, that was how Tom Hipper put it.
During a three-week stay at Harsa, the converted troopships were exterior-armored and had real, military-strength bulkheads installed. They were also refitted with proper fire-control and defensive lasers topside, underside, fore-and-aft. Warsaw retained its sabot ice-cannon.
All wood bunks were ripped out of the frigates, converting them back into single-purpose fighting ships. It was proposed to refit the interior of the troopships, but Mr. Azazi wouldn’t quit harping on the need to keep the uncomfortable wooden bunks. The decision to keep them pleases everyone, even fastidious Magda Aklyan. Well, maybe not so much troopers with sore assess.
Azazi won everyone over when he said: “These are Genèven ships, Captain Aklyan. They even smell like Toruń Wood. Well, like it usta bafor the fire. They oughta stay smelly. We need to re‘member our homes. Gods know when we’ll see dem again. Let the bunks be, ma’am.”
So only one-third of the pine and oak and teak-scented emergency bunks added to the liners at Toruń Shipyard were removed, to make interior room. The rest were padded thickly, with new acceleration-deceleration, foot-and-arm restraints. The AC-DC restraints made the wood bunks look like old, country birthing-slabs. That led to a lot of obscene jokes, and not a little sexual contortion and intriguing experimentation, when the Rusty Buckles came onboard.
Outwardly, the troopships are fully reworked with Krevan-beige, carbyne-armor paint bonded into the hulls. They have proper dodgers fore-and-aft, military-caliber gravel catchers to replace weaker civilian types. Now the two former Grün liners serve proudly as fully armed-and-armored troopships. Ships of war, not luxury cruises by rich tourists looking to picnic in the Old Forests around Toruń. The woods are nearly all gone now, in any case. Burned to stumps.
Orestes is the sole moon orbiting its large parent, Clytemnestra. It’s tucked nicely within the warm habitable zone of a bright Class-A star of the same name. Orestes Base is guarded by a garrison of NCU marines, comprising the bulk of the moon’s thin population. It’s well-defended by orbital platform tokamaks and heavy, long-range laser batteries. Clytemnestra’s defenses are even thicker, though it relies on the tokamak platforms at Orestes rather than risk its own surface batteries. There’s a powerful NCU battle-squadron assigned to base-and-system defense. The base is further protected by firepower of a large spaceyard permanently parked in the lunar L3.
Wildfire pulls into Orestes dock on time, “ship-shape and in Katowice fashion,” as cadets used to say at KRN Academy on Katowice, before RIK troops burned it down. Crisp sailors in clean, pale-wheat uniforms with white-striping and neat, peaked caps form a stark contrast to the bearded, raggedy troops of the Rusty Buckles who pour onto pressurized quays then head to the elevator cabs for a quick ride to Orestes’ surface. Many are drunk already, adding to an unsavory KRA reputation at Orestes, about which Buckles don’t give a good godsdamn.
Jan and Zofia feel chill stares from local civis, though not overt animosity, as they check into an off-base hotel for some rather special R&R. Then they forget all about hostile looks and the odd moon outside, about the war and Rusty Buckles and even Madjenik and the Brigade.
Zofia was right. No fighter objects to their sexual relationship. Indeed, troopers clearly and openly approve, to judge by wolf-whistles and catcalls that follow Jan and Zofia well past the perimeter gate as they leave the base, hand-in-hand like a couple of love-struck teenagers. Other officers also seem indifferent to this clear and open breach of anti-fraternization rules. Some are embroiled in complex and carnal affairs of their own, but most get that war is totally different than peacetime and everyone needs to find comfort where they can..
“You were a fool to worry about regs,” Zofia chastises and teases Jan. “Or were you just hiding behind them?” He looks all wooly-headed, sheepishly contrite. Just as she wants him.
They spend their whole “honeymoon” in their room. That’s what they laughingly call three days of exuberant sexual romping and little sleep, and eating oversweet food and downing way too much cheap gin in an even cheaper hotel. Jan feels younger than he has in years, and far happier. Even though he still can’t quite understand what it is Zofia sees in him, he no longer has any doubts about her. She’s the best thing that ever happened in his life. Hands down.
Their time is cut short on the fourth day. Just after dawn an urgent message from the War Government on Harsa lights up their coms. “Urgent bulletin. Shore leave for all KRA personnel is cancelled, immediate effect. All training for ground forces is terminated. All units on Orestes will report to designated muster points. Return to your troopships and prepare for embarkation. Be in touch with your senior commanders ASAP. Updates to follow. Keep this channel open.”
“What’s going on? Why is leave cancelled?”
Urgent orders arriving direct from Orestes orbit interrupt Zofia’s questions. “Aklyan to commander, Wysocki Brigade. Aklyan to all commanders, 1st Division. Wildfire is pulling out, stat. Get all Wreckers and Rusty Buckles sobered up and move them to the north NCU elevator.”
Jan and Zofia look at each other anxiously. “Where are we going?”
Magda Aklyan is about to tell them: “You have one hour to get to the shuttles, top two decks of Orestes Military Lift #3. From there, direct loading onto Warsaw and Jutlandia. We leave orbit in three hours. Emergency protocols. Destination: Minotaur.”
“Minotaur? That’s a moon, yes? At Portus Cale?” Jan asks Zofia.
“Yes, but there’s no base there. Least ways, not one I ever heard about.”
“What urgent business can KRN and KRA have at a moon with no base? Think maybe this is a mock assault, a full-scale training op? Including a fake emergency embarkation?”
She shrugs. “Orders are orders, my dear. We just go where we’re told.”
Jan rolls over to kiss her one last time before the new orders end their “honeymoon,” but a third message arrives chasing the heels of the first two even before his lips reach hers. This one is NCU Orestes Base Authority. It blares over hotel speakers, outside in the street, preempts all civilian memex channels, and races across the GovNeb and milneb in screeching red letters.
“ALERT! ALERT! THE CALMAR UNION IS NOW AT WAR WITH THE DAURAN COMMONS AND THE GRUN IMPERIUM. REPEAT. THIS UNION IS NOW AT WAR.
TEN EASTERN SYSTEMS ARE CONFIRMED UNDER ENEMY FLEET OR GROUND ATTACK. MORE SYSTEMS ARE REPORTING UNCONFIRMED KAIGUN AND DRN SIGHTINGS. UNIDENTIFED PHANTOMS REPORTED, MULTIPLE NAVAL BASES.
AS OF THIS NOTICE ALL ACU AND NCU UNITS ARE COMBAT DUTY ACTIVE. LEAVE IS CANCELLED EFFECTIVE THIS NOTIFICATION. EVERYONE ON THE ACTIVE MI
LITARY REGISTER REPORT TO THE PORT AUTHORITY FOR MUSTER.
ANYONE ON THE WATCH ROSTER ONLY, REPEAT WATCH ROSTER ONLY, MUST CHECK RELAYS FOR CONSCRIPTION NUMBER AND MUSTER SITE. WHEN YOUR MUSTER CLASS IS CALLED, REPORT TO THE DESIGNATED ASSEMBLY AREA.
ALL CIVILIANS WILL STAY IN THEIR HOMES AND AT WORK SITES TO AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION. ANY CIVILIAN IN THE STREETS IN ONE HOUR IS SUBJECT TO ARREST. STAY IN YOUR HOMES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
THIS IS NO DRILL. TEN SYSTEMS OF THE CALMAR UNION ARE NOW UNDER ATTACK. WE ARE AT WAR WITH BOTH EASTERN EMPIRES. ORESTES BASE IS DESIGNATED WAR DUTY AND WAR ZONE ACTIVE. MARTIAL LAW ATTAINS.
ALL ENEMY SHIPS AND GOODS ARE HEREBY IMPOUNDED. ALL CITIZENS OF NEUTRAL STATES MUST REPORT TO LOCAL POLICE FOR REGISTRATION.
DAURAN AND GRUN CITIZENS MUST REPORT TO ORESTES PORT EMERGENCY AUTHORITY FOR REGISTRATION AND INTERNMENT PROCESSING. YOU HAVE THREE HOURS TO COMPLY. FAILURE TO REGISTER AS AN ENEMY ALIEN WILL BE HARSHLY AND SWIFTLY PUNISHED. THIS MESSAGE WILL NOW REPEAT.
