by Ian Douglas
There was a hesitation on the other end. “Sir, that will restrict our ability to respond to the enemy a bit.”
“Just do it, Colonel! I don’t want that battalion becoming another bunch of POWs!”
“Yes, sir.”
The Marine transport Marne was already edging closer toward the ragged edge of the ring, the fighters of both of her strike squadrons spilling from her launch tubes.
And behind the fighters came a cloud of MAPP-2 Assault Pods—Apache Tears, as they were called—light-drinking black teardrops of nanomatrix, each holding a fully armed and armored USNA Marine. There were more than a thousand of them in the cloud, moving together in concert as they edged their way up to the ragged crater that was their entrance into the ring.
“CAG,” Gray said. “You still have the rest of America’s fighters on standby?”
“Yes, Admiral. The Dragonfires, the Lightnings, and the Impactors.”
“Deploy them in support of the Marines, if you please.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Launching fighters . . .”
Gray was extremely glad that America had been able to upgrade all of her fighters to the new SG-420 Starblades. When he’d been a fighter driver, about 12 million years ago, he’d flown the old SG-92 Starhawk . . . and he knew he’d not have wanted to try flying one of those inside an enclosed, debris-strewn compartment within an alien structure.
Fleet repair vessels like the Vulcan, and even America herself, could grow new fighters almost indefinitely, so long as they had sources of raw material available, and there was no good logistical reason to continue using outdated designs. The problem came with headware and with wetware—the training of human organic brains. There simply weren’t enough pilots who’d grown up with the newest fighter systems as yet, and that might limit what they would be able to do in there.
Well, they would find out soon enough.
VFA-31, The Impactors
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1705 hours, TFT
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . drop!”
Lieutenant Commander Edmond St. Clair felt the sensation of weight vanish as his Starblade fell down its launch tube and out into the starless void. America’s three flight decks, the outermost portions of the hab modules rotating around the carrier’s spine about twice a minute, received the benefit of a half G of spin gravity. Releasing the fighters under that acceleration dropped them into open space behind America’s shield cap with an outward velocity of five meters per second, plus whatever forward momentum the carrier possessed at the moment of drop.
In open space, now, St. Clair accelerated slightly, moving clear of the huge curve of the carrier’s shield cap, then nudged his Starblade forward.
St. Clair was still getting used to the new fighter. When he’d been with the British contingent of the Confederation military, he’d been trained and cybernetically equipped to fly the Franco-German KRG-60 Todtadler fighters . . . the “Death Eagles” that were roughly the equivalent of the USNA SG-101 Velociraptor. He’d received a nanobiological upgrade when he’d joined the USNA Navy, of course, including both chelated cybermemory upgrades and a genetic prosthesis to his organic brain designed to enhance his mental performance. He understood, however, that he was only able to control the Starblade at all because the Starblade’s AI was able to emulate more primitive control systems like the Velociraptor and the Todtadler. It turned out that it was far easier to boost an AI’s performance than to radically change the efficiency of the human brain.
“Form up on me,” he told his squadron, and he kicked his Starblade into a gentle drift forward, past the immense curve of America’s shield cap, past the handful of task-force ships ahead, and in toward the tattered outer edge of the Invictus ring. White pulses of light strobed and flashed in all directions as nuclear detonations blossomed in silent display.
One of the USNA ships, the battleship Illinois, was badly damaged. Her shield cap had already been holed, but now it was shredded, an expanding cloud of jagged debris, and many of her weapons were out of action. The destroyer Lackland had been hit numerous times as well, and looked like she was out of the fight.
The fighters of St. Clair’s squadron angled in toward the opening in the alien ring. Enemy fire from the ring structure had fallen off considerably in the past few minutes, but there were still a large number of the blocky, angular Glothr ships, and they were moving to try to intercept both the fighters and the Marine MAPP-2 pods. The Impactors, along with one of the marine squadrons, were deploying to cut them off.
A nuclear explosion flared off the ring’s surface immediately in front of St. Clair, and his Starblade went into a savage tumble.
For a terrifying moment, St. Clair fell into black emptiness. . . .
Marine Transport Marne
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1707 hours, TFT
The initial attack was being made by a single battalion off the Marne’s regimental assault group, supported by both of her Marine air-space squadrons, the Death Dealers and the Devil Dogs. Linked in within his high-tech cocoon on board the Marne, Colonel Joseph Jamison watched the deployment and directed the assault.
Jamison would have liked to stay linked with all twelve hundred of his troops, but not even the Marne’s formidable AI could have accomplished that. Instead, he was receiving steady data feeds from both of his squadron commanders and from nearly sixty regimental, company, and platoon commanders; intelligence and tactical officers; battlespace drones; and artificial intelligences within the assault force. “Hold the entryway,” he was telling Major Harrison Smith, his first batt commander. “Let the zoomies clear out the interior.”
“But we’re picking up transmissions from the Pax, Colonel,” Smith told him. “She’s only about ten kilometers in!”
“I don’t care, Major. Hold that perimeter. I’ll tell you when to move.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Smith didn’t sound pleased, but he was a good officer, and Jamison knew he could count on the man not to jump the gun. Jamison had served with Smith before, on Luna and in Earth orbit, and he knew he was a solid, reliable battalion CO. This was going to be a rough op—extracting hostages or POWs from enemy control always was—and Jamison wanted the CO at the sharp, pointy end to be one he could trust to follow orders.
Not that the other battalion COs weren’t good. They were Marines, which made them by definition the very best. But he’d not been in combat with them, as he had with Smith . . . and that made a difference.
Data was pouring in from the fighter squadrons now, and Jamison opened his mind wider to receive it.
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1703 hours, TFT
Gregory knew he was in serious trouble. Nothing in his Starblade was responding. The best nanotechnology in Earth’s entire military arsenal . . . and nothing was working. His fighter was past the ring, now, and falling steadily toward the vast, black globe of Invictus.
He did have power . . . a little. His auxiliary power tap was drawing a steady feed from the onboard singularity, a trickle of vacuum energy that was enough to keep his life support going, and to provide—if he was very lucky—enough maneuvering power to keep from slamming into the dark planet’s surface at better than fifty kilometers per second. He would have to nurse that power, however, if he intended to survive the impact. His AI, thank the gods, was back on-line now, and had assumed piloting duties. Gregory felt a small bump as the AI applied a few seconds of deceleration to the fighter’s internal grav-impeller blocks. You couldn’t get much thrust from the things, but if they lasted long enough, if they survived the stress of a high-velocity planetary approach, he might still live through this.
At least for a while. How long he would survive on the bleak surface of Invictus was still anyone’s guess.
Chapter Twenty-one
7 August, 2425
USNA Star Carrier America
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1710 hours, TFT
“All ships!” Gray snapped. “Cease fire! Cease fire!”
The task force had been drifting closer and closer to the edge of the alien ring, but as USNA fighters and MAPPed Marines entered the structure, the likelihood of scoring an own goal grew more and more certain. The attack now was in the hands of the Marine assault force and the supporting fighters; all the capital ships could do from here on out was provide covering fire on the flanks . . . and protect the assault force from an attack from space.
The Marines had seized the rim of the crater punched into the edge of the ring and were holding it against Glothr robots making their way along the external surface. A Marine assault personnel pod was very much like a Starblade fighter, but with a far more flexible and adaptable nanomatrix form: essentially a tarlike semisolid surrounding an inner capsule holding one Marine; the power, drive, and control systems; and a particle cannon. A MAPP-2 Apache Tear could extend parts of itself to grab hold of the bulkhead of an alien ship or fortress; could dissolve its way through to the interior; could even walk, after a clumsy fashion, though it generally hovered on gravitic impellers. The light-absorbing outer surface made it all but invisible against the blackness of space, and the particle cannon let it serve as a fighter if necessary, albeit slow and awkward.
Right now, nearly twelve hundred Marines in MAPP-2 assault pods were clinging to the ragged edge of the cavern opened in the ring surface, using their particle beams to fend off the gathering swarms of Glothr robots. Gray recognized a serious tactical danger in the situation. He’d ordered Jamison’s Marines to stay put at the entrance until the way inside had been cleared out by the USNA fighters . . . but the longer they waited there, holding their perimeter, the more time the Glothr had to gather their forces. Through his data feed, Gray was aware of some thousands of Glothr robots out beyond the Marine perimeter, taking advantage of every bit of cover provided by the blasted and twisted architecture of the ring surface as they steadily moved closer. So far as Gray knew, the Marines of the Marne’s regimental assault group were up against an entire planet’s worth of defenders and defending technologies, and it wouldn’t pay at all to hang around longer than was absolutely necessary.
With a sudden shock, Gray realized that he was playing the role of MMREMF.
REMFs—the acronym’s polite translation was “rear-echelon mothers”—had been the bane of frontline troops for centuries . . . the gold-braid-heavy bastards who drew their plans in the comfort and safety of headquarters and gave the orders that sent men out to die. Micro-managing REMFs were infinitely worse.
Starting in the late twentieth century, military operations had been dominated more and more by advancing communications technologies designed to eliminate the ancient fog of war. It had become possible for generals—even government leaders—to watch a battle unfold in real time and to give orders to the officers on the ground from thousands of kilometers away.
Unfortunately, being able to see and hear all that was happening from the other side of the planet didn’t necessarily convey the battlefield reality. The commander of the forces on the ground knew things the political and military leaders in the rear could never possibly know—the temper and morale of the troops, for instance, how tired they were, how scared, how exposed, or how close they were to breaking. The fact that the people in the rear had not gone through the same training as the troops on the ground, or in the band-of-brothers camaraderie they shared, meant that those leaders would always be out of touch, to some degree, with the men and women on the ground.
Military history included more than one account of field commanders who had suddenly and mysteriously suffered “communications difficulties” that had allowed them to ignore orders from the rear.
Over the next few centuries, the technology had only improved, making convenient comm difficulties harder and harder to explain . . . or invoke.
Earth and the USNA military leadership was 12 million years in the past, and tens of thousands of light years distant, but Gray himself now constituted a local REMF, watching the Marine deployment from his seat on the flag bridge and giving orders to the Marine commanders. A micromanaging REMF, no less.
“Colonel Jamison.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“It occurs to me that you and I are . . . removed a bit from the engagement. Perhaps we should give Major Smith his head.”
“I concur, Admiral.” There was a long hesitation. “Thank you.”
“Give ’em hell, Colonel.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
1/4 Marines
4th Regimental Assault Group, 1st MARDIV
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1710 hours, TFT
The First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment of the First Marine Division clung to the ragged edge of a black and bottomless hell, fighting for its life. Major Harrison Smith edged his MAPP along a half-melted fold of ring material, trying to get a better look at the enemy advance along this sector of the perimeter.
Two of his Marines were crouched just ahead, looking like jet-black three-meter-wide amoebae clinging to the twisted and ice-covered surface. One of them edged above the lip of the crater, the muzzle of his pee-beep protruding from the rippling black nanomatrix of his pod. Alphanumerics scrolling past Smith’s vision identified the Marines—PFC Gene Sanders and Lance Corporal Ed Moultrie.
Moultrie’s weapon fired, eliciting a brief hiss of static over Smith’s comm unit. A hundred meters away, a silvery, cigar-shaped object flared in a brilliant light, fragmenting.
“Got the bastard!”
“Good shot, Moultrie,” Smith said.
The man almost jumped off his perch. “Oh! Uh . . . thank you, sir!”
“Don’t mind me,” Smith said. “Keep after ’em!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Smith moved away. “Shit!” the voice of PFC Sanders said in something like awe. “Was that the skipper?”
“One of ’em, Sanders,” Moultrie replied. “Forget about it. Keep firing!”
Smith chuckled to himself. Rank-and-file Marines tended not to expect the brass to come poking around their fighting positions, not in the middle of a hot firefight. He liked to keep them on their toes.
Or, in this case, on their pseudopods. MAPP-2 units were slow and clumsy as fighters in open space, but they served well as highly specialized combat armor on the surface, especially when that surface was uneven and possessed an uncertain gravity.
There was gravity here on the outer edge of the Invictus ring—the total mass of the ring was that of a small planet, added to the more powerful pull of Invictus itself; the ring was rotating slowly, however, keeping match with the planet’s leisurely forty-four-hour rotation, and the outward centrifugal force generated by that rotation cancelled a great deal of that attraction. There was, in fact, just enough gravity that the immense hole in the edge of the ring—a good eight kilometers across—felt like down, but a misstep could send you flying here, and without grav impellers you might find yourself in orbit. MAPP-2 units had originally been designed for operations on the surfaces of asteroids, or on the outside hulls of orbital structures like planetary fortresses or orbital manufactories, places where Marines needed something that could serve as both spaceship and personal armor, depending on the situation.
Extending another pseudopod, Smith reached for a fold in the ring structure’s surface, let the nanomatrix on his gauntlet’s palm adhere to it, and then pulled himself across. Light flared above him—another particle burst, though he didn’t know if it had been fired by Marine or Glothr.
Another blast—silent, but sending a rippling shock wave through the surface strong enough to break his hold. Smith latched on with three more pseudopods, then directed his attention up and out. Sure enough, one of the frigate-sized G
lothr ships was there, five kilometers overhead and dropping toward the surface, firing as it came. Smith extended his particle-beam weapon, locked on, and triggered it, sending a stream of protons slashing into the target. Other Marines opened fire on the intruder as well, but not before the Glothr ship fired again, sending several Apache Tears tumbling off into space.
Damn it . . . how long are we going to be kept here in this exposed position?
“Castle Rock, Castle Rock!” he called. “This is One-Four! We need some cover down here!”
“One-Four, Castle Rock,” the voice of the assault group’s command/control center replied. “On the way!”
The concentrated fire from the Marines on the perimeter seemed to be having an effect. The frigate was pulling back, now, as bright flashes and sparkles across its surface showed dozens of hits. An instant later, the Glothr ship crumpled as gravitic rounds from the battleship New York slashed into the boxy structure and began devouring it from the inside out.
Gravitic guns in the human arsenal were relatively recent developments of one of the enemy’s weapons—weapons developed originally by the Turusch for planetary bombardment and used in their attacks on Haris and Osiris. They were difficult and dangerous weapons—they tended to sear nearby space with intense bursts of gamma and X-rays as they ate their way through solid matter—and were rarely used in fleet actions, but the big battleships each mounted a couple of grav cannon turrets and, sometimes, they could be used against capital ships with considerable effectiveness.
Crippled, the Glothr ship drifted toward the horizon. A flight of four Navy fighters pursued it.
Most of the zoomies—the fighter pilots—had already descended into the hole and were supposed to be clearing the way for the main body of Marines, but if they had to sit perched up here for much longer, those Glothr monsters were going to sweep them right off into space.
Smith was getting a steady feed of data, both from assault-team drones already inside the ring structure and from the command-control center on the Marne. The two captured High Guard ships, he noted, had been identified already, their locations marked on his in-head maps.
