by D. J. Holmes
With trepidation James accessed the details of the Chinese attack on Cook. He searched the list of deaths from the attack on the orbital shipyard and battlestations but Johnston’s wife wasn’t there. Then he spotted a secondary file marked ‘collateral causalities.’ As he read, he realized that as the shipyard in orbit around Cook had been destroyed it hadn’t simply exploded. Too large to be completely destroyed by the smaller missiles used by the attacking missileboats, it had broken up. Several large chunks had broken through the planet’s atmosphere and struck the surface. None had been large enough to do any serious damage but one had impacted the ocean. The collision had been near a series of fishing villages that were being set up to provide food for the growing population of a nearby city. As he searched through the dead he found the name he was looking for. Noelle Johnston. Selecting her name brought up some additional details including her maiden name. Looking back at the list of collateral causalities, James saw other people with the same last name. Noelle’s family in Cook must have been involved in setting up the new fishing villages. Many of them had been killed as a tsunami, caused by the section of the shipyard that had impacted the sea only a few miles from their village, had swamped the area.
Searching through some more files, James tried to find out where the Major had been when this happened. He was horrified to find out that he had been in the Cook system. He had just arrived hours earlier and had been in orbit aboard a passenger freighter when the attack had taken place. A few more seconds found that the freighter had attempted to contact the villages to warn them of the approaching danger. While everyone else’s attention had been focused on the battle unfolding in orbit around Cook, one man’s attention had been on the planet. The major cities all had their own missile defense systems to protect against invasion and any debris falling from orbit. The villages did not. Johnston’s warnings had allowed the other villages to be evacuated just in time but the one his wife had been in was just too close to the impact.
Suddenly, James felt a new weight on his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what Major Johnston had gone through. To watch his wife die before his very eyes, the very wife he had told to go to somewhere he had thought was safe. Forgetting the other duties that were pressing upon him, James tried to think of how he could help the Major but when Gupta returned twenty minutes later needing his approval for another personnel change nothing had come to him.
*
Twelve days later Raptor and Ghost dropped out of shift space on the edge of the Reading system. They had stopped off in the Damang system to carry out some exercises and observe any Chinese shipping that was passing through on its way to V17. Admiral Cunningham’s blockade of V17 was meant to keep the Chinese fleet locked up so it couldn’t carry out any further attacks. Normally, when blockading a system it was easy to stop any ships getting in by simply patrolling the shift passages. In the Void this was impossible as a ship could approach from any angle. That meant the Chinese were able to run as much supplies and reinforcements into the system as they wanted. The only caveat was that once in the system it was difficult to leave. Any ships trying to make their way to the edge of the mass shadow were easily spotted, allowing Admiral Cunningham to get a blocking force in place.
Before they left, the latest intel from the Admiral had been that the Chinese were running supply convoys into V17 at a rate of about one every two weeks, although the gap had been slowly expanding. RSNI operatives imbedded with the Admiral’s fleet suspected the Chinese were having problems finding enough freighters to keep sending into V17 when so few were returning.
By the time Raptor and Ghost had left Excalibur another convoy was expected and so they had waited in stealth to watch the convoy pass through. A light cruiser and a destroyer had been escorting it. As they had been too far away to sneak into close range under stealth, Lightfoot had decided to leave it alone. A long range shooting match with a light cruiser and destroyer would likely leave one if not both British destroyers damaged and unable to continue.
Now in the Reading system, both ships came to a stop on the edge of the mass shadow. Every passive scanner was focused on the inner system. “The gravimetric sensors are not picking up any ships at high acceleration sir,” Sub Lieutenant Becket called out from her place at the sensors console. She was another of the crew from Drake who had been assigned to Raptor. James was pleased to have her.
Over the next ten minutes Becket and the other bridge officers worked to analyze all the data that was coming in. James purposely didn’t watch the live feeds. He wanted his bridge crew to learn to work without his oversight.
After spending some time with Becket, Romanov switched on the main holo display. He also configured it so that the holo display on the auxiliary bridge would show the same image. All RSN military ships were fitted with auxiliary bridges that could take over the control of the ship in the event that the main bridge was damaged. When at battle stations, the First Lieutenant was assigned to the auxiliary bridge and was to be prepared to take over at a moment’s notice. James was still getting used to the idea of having Gupta aboard and yet not on the bridge where he could pick her brains.
With a COM channel opened between the two bridges, Romanov gave James and Gupta a breakdown of his findings so far. “Captain, the mining station is definitely still operational, it’s radiating heat into the third planet’s atmosphere like crazy. The levels are actually higher than our safety or environmental regulations allow. I suspect the Chinese have expanded the mining operation or are running our equipment at full capacity. We’ve also been getting intermittent electromagnetic radiation from orbit around the planet. It wasn’t enough to ID a ship but there’s something in orbit. If it’s not a ship it must be some kind of automated station.”
Before James could respond the Sub Lieutenant manning Communications announced that Ghost had established a laser link and Lightfoot was on the line.
“Captain,” James said to acknowledge that he was now receiving the visual of Captain Lightfoot. “My officers believe there to be a ship in orbit around the third planet. Probably keeping station above the mining facilities.”
“As do mine, Captain Somerville,” Lightfoot replied. “I’ve decided to go with plan gamma. You may begin transferring your marines over to Ghost immediately. We’ll depart as soon as they are on board. Happy hunting Captain.”
“You too sir,” James replied as the visual of Lightfoot disappeared. Plan gamma called for Ghost to move into the system and assault the mining station while Raptor waited near the mass shadow to pick off any ships that tried to leave.
Typing in a series of commands, James sent orders for the marines to prepare to embark onto Ghost. Then he ordered the crew manning the auxiliary bridge to stand down. It would take hours for Ghost to creep into the system under stealth and he didn’t want his crew to get worn out before the real fun began.
*
Major Samuel Johnston could feel his anger growing as Ghost got closer and closer to the mining facilities and the Chinese inside. During the time it had taken Ghost to get close to the third planet of the Reading system he had been briefing the marines from Raptor. Initially, he had planned to fully brief them when he had visited Raptor back at Excalibur but in the end he had only stayed long enough to give them the barest details. He hadn’t expected to see Captain Somerville there let alone Lieutenant Gupta and Sub Lieutenant Becket. Seeing so many familiar faces had brought back memories of the mission to Excalibur and his fateful decision to leave Earth. Only Captain Lightfoot knew of his loss and he hadn’t wanted to speak to any of the old crew members of Drake.
Every morning he woke up, he regretted his decision to agree to Becket’s request that he be temporally reactivated in the marines. For days his anger had been directed at her and the RSNI spook Mr. Jones. Yet seeing her again had softened it somewhat. She had done well on the Excalibur mission and he respected her. He knew she had only been following orders when she had turned up at his house. In fact, he knew that ten t
imes out of ten he would have accepted the Marines call to be reactivated and carry out his duty. But hindsight was sometimes a cruel mistress. Now, all he wanted was to go back and change his decision. And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t change his decision and he couldn’t change his current circumstances. So now he focused all his anger and rage on killing any Chinese he could get his hands on. They had killed his wife and now he was going to kill them.
All the marines were crammed onto the five shuttles in both of Ghost’s shuttle bays. The shuttles themselves were packed closely together as two were from Raptor. As the commanding officer Johnston sat in the cockpit of the lead shuttle with the two pilots. He had a direct line to the bridge and was able to watch the holo image of Ghost and the third planet as they made their approach.
When they were close enough, visuals confirmed the presence of a Chinese ship in orbit. It had turned out to be a Chinese frigate. Some of the marines were placing bets on whether or not it would stay and try to fight or would turn tail and run when they spotted Ghost. Johnston hoped its Commander would be foolish enough to stay and fight. He was looking forward to seeing the frigate gunned down. The logical part of him not driven by his anger realized that it was very unlikely. The frigate could never hope to match itself against Ghost.
At the prearranged time a power fluctuation erupted from Ghost’s number three fission reactor. It was so strong, it set off minor warnings on the control board of the shuttle Johnston was in. The Chinese couldn’t miss it. Indeed, as Johnston watched, it only took the Chinese frigate seconds before it began to send out powerful beams of energy using its main search radar. Almost immediately Ghost went to full power, charging straight for the frigate. With luck it would look to the Chinese like Ghost had been trying to sneak up to the frigate and had been given away by a faulty reactor.
Now the Chinese Commander would know what he was up against. Would he stay or run? Johnston only had to wait thirty seconds to find out. After a brief flurry of electromagnetic radiation suggesting a signal was sent down to the mining facilities the frigate began to boost out of orbit, away from the approaching British destroyer. Someone on the bridge plotted the frigate’s likely rout of escape given its current vector. At present speeds Ghost would be able to get off a few shots from her two bow tubes but then the smaller frigate’s better acceleration would allow it to escape. Of course, Ghost had more acceleration up her sleeve but the Chinese weren’t to know that.
As the frigate began to break orbit and head away from the third planet Ghost’s vector took her gradually away from a direct approach to the mining facility and her speed continued to increase. Without knowing the route of escape the frigate would choose, it had been impossible to plan the next part of the mission precisely, but now that the frigate had begun to move someone on Ghost’s bridge updated the shuttle with their flight plans. On her new vector Ghost would pass closest to the mining facilities in another five minutes sixty seconds. Three minutes before this point the shuttles would launch and immediately begin to decelerate in order to drop down into the planet’s atmosphere and, hopefully, surprise the Chinese defenders. Unless the Chinese had shipped in expensive sensor packages for the mining facility, they wouldn’t be able to detect the small shuttles. All they would see would be Ghost passing by the planet in pursuit of the escaping frigate. At the same time Ghost would turn on her jamming equipment to prevent the frigate from warning the planet. Johnston didn’t know if Somerville or Lightfoot had come up with the plan but he was suitably impressed. He would be even more so if it worked.
When the timer hit zero, the shuttles began to launch from the two shuttle bays. One part of being in the marines Johnston hated was that he spent most of his life being a passenger. Now that the mission was a go he still had to wait and watch as the pilots guided his shuttle to its destination. Each shuttle had its own target and as they began to descend through the atmosphere the shuttles separated as the mining facilities covered an area of more than thirty square miles. Johnston and his first platoon would be leading the assault to recover the prisoners in conjunction with second platoon on board the shuttle keeping station with them. The other three platoons would secure the main control facilities, the landing zone and the equipment store. Details on the facility said there was enough explosive in the equipment store to blow up the entire facility. Johnston didn’t want some suicidal Chinese taking out his entire assault party.
With their targets already identified, the other three shuttles began their final swoop down to land. A hail of fire sprang up from the ground at the shuttle making its way to the landing zone but it was cut short as the shuttle fired a hyper velocity missile at the defenders. Johnston ground his teeth as he waited for the co-pilot to work the shuttle’s thermal scanners. “There,” he shouted. “The greatest concentration of bodies is in the secondary housing unit, that must be them.”
Johnston only had to glance at the holo display to confirm the findings. “Take us in,” he ordered.
As the shuttle zoomed in towards its target, an alert had obviously gone out from one of the other objectives for men in combat armor began pouring out of one of the side buildings. The marine gunners aboard the two shuttles began to fire at them but the shuttles weaving through the mining equipment that towered into the sky put most of their shots off. All the same, three or four Chinese fell to the ground with gaping holes where plasma cannon fire had punched through them, armor and all.
While all this was going on, Johnston was reviewing the tactical scans of the area. Tapping his command console he spoke into his COM unit, “put us down over there, we’ll take it from here.”
Switching between channels, he continued, “ok Marines, our objective is coming up. Once we disembark the Chinese positions will be at our three o’clock. First and second squads, you are to lay down covering fire. Third squad you’re with me, we’re going to flank round to the right.”
After a series of affirmatives from the squad leaders Johnston switched the COM channel again, “Lieutenant Albion, my men are going to lay down covering fire and flank to the right. Our flanking maneuver will only be a feint. I want you to give us thirty seconds and then take your men down the left flank, punch through the defenders and get into that building. Leave any stragglers to me.”
In the Royal Marines each squad consisted of six men and three squads made a platoon. Destroyers carried a total of three platoons and, with one left on Raptor that gave Johnston a total fighting force of ninety men. He was confident that if he could get a full platoon of marines in combat armor into their target building, any defenses inside would crumble. They just had to get past what was waiting for them outside.
Before the shuttle hit the ground, Johnston was jumping out, trusting his power armor to cushion the fall. He had ordered the shuttle to put down behind some mining equipment so his men had a screen protecting them from enemy fire while they disembarked. As soon as they were out the first and second squads spread out through the mining equipment and began to fire at the makeshift barriers the defenders had set up in front of the building holding the hostages. Once third squad had formed up around him, Johnston sprinted off at an angle away from the barricade. He was constantly scanning his surroundings but was confident the defenders would be focused on the attack coming from their front. After sixty seconds, he slowed the pace of his sprint and turned back towards the enemy with third squad behind him. When he got to the point he could see the green flashes of the plasma cannons he crouched down and signaled the rest of the squad to fan out. Slowly they maneuvered around the various mining equipment until they all had good firing positions.
When he saw that everyone was in position he gave the command. “Fire!” Suddenly, the defenders found themselves taking fire from two directions. The first three plasma bolts from his men all found their targets. After that the defenders ducked behind cover that would protect them from the new angle of attack, popping up occasionally to return fire. When Johnston heard a click over the radio t
o signal that Lieutenant Albion’s platoon was in place he sent an acknowledgment back.
Peeking out from his cover, Johnston saw eighteen marines in heavy combat armor break out of cover from almost directly behind the new positions the defenders had taken. Assisted by the combat armor a marine could sprint at sixty miles per hour over short distances. Each marine had his plasma rifle aimed at a defender but they were holding their fire. It wasn’t until the first defender had spotted them and began to turn to open fire that Lieutenant Albion gave the order to open up. At almost point blank range a hail of plasma bolts rained down on the defenders, killing more than fifteen of them. The rest abandoned their now useless cover and dove away from the secondary living quarters to find safety. A few fell to shots from his platoon while about ten escaped.
The gap in the defenses was all the encouragement Albion needed, he immediately ordered his men to alter their angle of attack and make straight for the now undefended entrance to the living quarters. Quickly, explosive charges were fastened to the large doors and the marines stepped back as they detonated. Before the smoke began to clear Albion and his squad were rushing through the door. Plasma bolts rained out the door past the entering marines. One struck Albion and blew him backwards to land in the dirt in front of his objective. Another marine fled clutching his leg but the sheer weight of return fire from the marines silenced the defenders and the rest of the marines were in the building in seconds.
