by John Lumpkin
It actually took an hour; the Chinese were careful in forming up for their bombardment runs on Sequoia. They could either bunch up their fleet and do a massive strike on the surface every three hours, or spread out and keep up continuous fire, never giving the Americans on the surface a breather but limiting their ability to concentrate their strikes.
They chose to come in together.
“Han ships moving in range,” said the battalion sensor officer over the comms net.
Half the Chinese ships, including the assault carriers, hung back above 20,000 kilometers. The rest moved to a 2,500-klick orbit and kept descending. At that range, the American artillery’s firepower far exceeded that of the Hans; the Chinese needed to get closer to use their bombardment lasers effectively.
“All guns, target Bandit-3 and fire at will,” Montaño transmitted. “Two second duration.” Bandit-3 was the Wuhan, a battlecruiser, likely the Chinese flagship. Rand relayed the command to his gun crews, heard acknowledgements from all three.
Sixteen of the battalion’s 18 cannon fired – two were down for service when the battle started. Rand set his laser to infrared; it was a low-elevation shot that had to cut through lots of Sequoia’s atmosphere, so a beam in a visible frequency would be less effective. Other shots, some green and some infrared, sliced upward from the other laser cannon buried across the continent. Several had to burn through overhead clouds, and the thunder of scorched air rolled across the surface of Sequoia.
Almost all of the beams struck the Wuhan in the nose; a few, betrayed by faults in their targeting software or mirror-control machinery, missed on the first shot, but adjusted and hit on the second. The Wuhan was well-armored, but the beams drilled multiple holes in her. Giant sparks of plasma exploded outward from the point of impact; at the same time, a second set of sparks exploded on the ship’s starboard rear quarter – at least one laser had burned all the way through.
Cheers resounded. One of Rand’s operators shouted over them.
“Counterbattery fire coming in!” A nervous pause as weak beams played across Sequoia, aiming for mirrors even as the optics descended beneath the surface. “All guns reporting nominal. No damage.”
Rand watched his screen as his guns cooled for the next shot. Ten seconds, and a second barrage punished the Wuhan again. One laser touched part of her cooling system; an explosion of superheated lithium punched outward through the hull. The ship’s nose looked like Swiss cheese. The ship tumbled end over end.
A kill! We might actually win this, Rand thought. Somebody called out over the comms net that the ship was burning out of control and would break up in Kuan Yin’s atmosphere. Lasers from the Army brigade on the far side of the continent tagged another destroyer; it turned over and withdrew, leaking drive plasma.
Then, “Vampire! Radar shows multiple kinetics inbound to our position from orbit!”
Montaño’s voice: “Target the kinetics.”
That’s their plan, Rand thought. They must have launched missiles from high up, and timed their assault so we’d have to deal with them. Their timing wasn’t perfect, or else we wouldn’t have nailed that battlecruiser as well as we did.
Scores of missiles and guided coilgun rounds entered the atmosphere above Sequoia. Battle computers analyzed their trajectories and noted their likely targets: the spaceports, government offices, and military facilities.
The space defense artillery made a good accounting of itself, wiping out most of the missiles high above the surface. As the survivors descended, smaller air-defense lasers joined in, picking off those that leaked through. Some debris rained to the planet below, crashing into houses and lighting fires. Three missiles destroyed the remote railway junction connecting Cottonwood to the other cities on the continent.
But the weapons had also provided the necessary cover for the Chinese fleet; its orbit took it to the far side of the planet, where the few surviving U.S. satellites spotted it lowering its altitude and preparing for a bombardment pass.
During the respite, Rand let his crews take breaks in turns, allowing them to stretch, go to the bathroom and get some food, but he did not rise from his seat, even as the vampire call came yet again.
The Hans had timed their second pass with another wave of descending missiles. The ships and missiles “rose” over the far side of Sequoia first, leaving Rand and his guns to wait until they were higher in his sky.
Reports came in from the other side of the continent, and the news wasn’t good. Chinese special forces, thought to be the elite Flying Dragons, had attacked from the sea, assaulting several laser stations near Sycamore. Submarine-launched cruise missiles streaked toward other lasers; Rand heard another platoon leader from his battalion reporting his targeting center had been hit before going off the air. Elsewhere, lasers from orbit pounded mirrors as soon as they rose from the ground; missiles with penetrators burrowed into the surface, seeking and finding the laser engines and emitter tubes. The fire from the surface of Sequoia slackened …
… and Rand’s unit was targeted. The lasers came first, burning across the landscape, aiming at known points where mirrors had surfaced thus far in the battle. Several bombardment beams found their targets, digging through the cupola armor and wrecking the mirrors below. The battalion’s radar also took a hit; computer-run telescopes would have to manage targeting going forward. Miss Bitch lost three mirrors; California Girl lost two.
Rand, angry, tapped his handheld, called his boss, Captain Groves. “Ma'am, they’re going to overwhelm us unless we can take out some of those ships! They’re coming directly overhead now, and my guns will have maximum penetration through the atmosphere. I’d like to pull my team off defensive fire.”
Groves thought it over: Less defensive fire meant more missiles getting through, but maybe ...
“Request approved,” she said.
Rand looked over the list of ships in his sky and targeted a vulnerable-looking frigate that was contributing to the inferno above him. His guns fired several half-second shots over one minute. Laser fire from the frigate stopped, and, moments later, the ship’s entire forward sphere exploded. The ship fell, headless, toward the planet.
A corner of his screen started flashing. Groves was in another underground control center 20 klicks away, but her shout came through crystal clear over the comms system.
“Castillo, put your guns back on defensive fire, now!” she said. “Several inbound kinetics are changing course toward your location. I think you pissed them off.”
The battery’s remaining lasers targeted the inbound missiles, but it was clear that the defenses were wearing down. Several missiles dropped decoys, further complicating the defenders’ efforts. Chinese lasers took out more and more mirrors; missiles were still dying, but they were getting closer to the surface before being shot down. After a few minutes, California Girl was completely offline, her octet of mirrors shattered. Alpha Dawg had three mirrors left; Miss Bitch had two – Rand was bizarrely pleased to note that the mirror at the just-repaired hatch was among them. Most of the other gun platoons were in the same shape or worse.
Rand hoped the guns would hold on until the Han fleet set over the planet; then his crews would have time to replace some of the damaged mirrors.
Then the call came in: “More missiles inbound!”
They didn’t have enough lasers to stop them all.
A penetrator warhead slammed into the ground just above Alpha Dawg, which was about 50 meters from Rand’s control room. It dug into the earth below. The earth collapsed into the cannon’s emitter, burying it under tons of dirt and rock.
A roar filled Rand’s ears. In the control room, computer screens died, and everything went dark, save for the small blue glow from self-powered handhelds. A cloud of dust washed over him.
He looked at his handheld first. NO CONNECTIVITY it told him. He was cut off.
“L.T., are you okay?” Private First Class Tim Yancey asked him. They felt another rumble … another penetrator hitting a
nother target, further away.
“Yeah,” Rand coughed.
A flashlight turned on, its beam reflected by motes of dust. It oscillated wildly, coming to rest right in Rand’s eyes. “Watch that light,” he growled. Private Rachel Lopez pointed the beam at her chin. “Sorry, L.T.”
She waved the light toward Sergeant Tyson, the platoon’s targeting center chief. He was slumped over at his console. Blood trickled from his mouth, but Rand couldn’t see any obvious injury.
Was he dead? He took the light from Lopez and pressed his fingers to his neck. He didn’t feel anything, but maybe he wasn’t touching the right place. He wasn’t a medic, and the brigade’s medical staff was out in the field with the infantry.
“Okay, Yancey, Lopez, it’s time to go,” he said.
“What about the sarge?” Lopez said.
“I think he’s dead,” Rand said. “I don’t think we’re going to get him up the access ladders without some special gear, anyway. We need to get outside, and then we’ll see about sending someone back for him.”
Rand knew that was probably a lie, but it was a comfortable one.
Of the three corridors leading away from the artillery control center, two had collapsed during the bombardment. Rand’s regular access hatch to the surface was beyond one of the earth-filled corridors. He and the two privates walked a kilometer down the third one, toward California Girl. They found two members of the gun crew in the control room, and two more, including the gun commander, Sergeant Hal Aguirre, frantically trying to mount a new mirror with only a flashlight to aid them.
Rand was silently counting who would still be alive in his platoon. Seven out of sixteen were accounted for. Alpha Dawg’s crew, including Rand’s platoon sergeant, was almost certainly dead, leaving Miss Bitch’s four operators the only unknown.
Rand ordered Aguirre not to bother with the mirror; the laser’s control computers were offline.
The seven survivors climbed to the surface. The hatch wasn’t responding to his handheld’s commands; he and Yancey had to hang side-by-side from the ladder to force it open.
They emerged into a blackened pasture. Rand’s cannon were located about 30 klicks from Fort Patton and Cottonwood, spread out along the periphery of a couple of ranches.
“I thought Hell was down,” Aguirre muttered as they surveyed the destruction.
The lasers had certainly created a fair imitation. They had swept across the field, leaving scorched carcasses of farm animals and brush fires in their wake, and the sooty smell of burning biomass overwhelmed the planet’s usual sulfurous stink. Rand saw no evidence the security fireteam assigned to protect the lasers had survived; their position had been decimated.
Nearby, smoke rose from the wreckage of a ranch house. Rand hoped that the Pressmans – who didn’t mind the military on their land and often invited the gun crews over for dinner – hadn’t been at home.
As they helped Lopez out of the mirror silo they heard a hiss in the air, growing louder. Something pulled Rand’s eyes toward the hillside where Miss Bitch was located. She had a mirror up! He saw a bright flash in the sky, about two kilometers above them – the laser was still tracking inbound missiles. Rand felt a brief burst of pride in the gun crew, still fighting, though out of touch with their leadership.
More hissing, which turned into a whistle, then a loud crack. Rand’s team dove to the ground. The flicker of motion in the sky came so fast Rand’s eyes barely registered it before the warhead struck the hillside.
If the weapon had been much larger they wouldn’t have had time to be aware of their own deaths. But it was a small penetrator, designed to spear into the ground to get at the protected compartments below, rather than destroy buildings and vehicles on the surface. Miss Bitch and the surviving operators died, and the flash from the strike burned through Rand’s closed eyelids and left afterimages sparkling on his retinas. Clods of dirt rained down.
“What is that?” Rand pointed to a dark blob arcing toward them.
Before anyone could respond, the mass landed in an organic crunch about five meters away from them. Black and red and yellow … and a few curls of white.
Rand answered his own question. “It’s a fucking sheep.”
About ten minutes after the bombardment ceased – Rand thought the Han fleet had set over the horizon – the seven troopers’ handhelds came back up on the brigade network.
It didn’t have good news. Rand was the only officer from the laser battalion who checked in.
The rest of the brigade had taken a beating. Han lasers and kinetics had pummeled the infantry battalions; Rand could see a vast pall of smoke rising from Cottonwood. The brigade’s underground command bunker had also taken a direct hit; Colonel Sykes and her staff were offline and probably dead.
The remains of the brigade were now led by an infantry battalion commander, a major, hiding in the hills on the far side of Cottonwood. His handheld gave him a rally point near the unit’s location.
We’ve lost, Rand realized. The U.S. of A. just got its ass kicked.
He punched up a map.
“Guys,” he said. “It’s an eighty-klick hike to the rally point. Any ideas?”
“Any dragoon suits stashed near here, sir?” Sergeant Aguirre asked, his tone formal. Rand wondered if the sergeant – his elder by a decade – was chiding him for his informality.
“None that I’m aware of,” Rand said. None of his troopers had walker or lifter attachments.
“What about that truck?” Private Lopez pointed at a pickup parked about twenty meters from the smoldering ranch house. Amazingly, it appeared to have been untouched by the bombardment.
“Wouldn’t the Hans find us and blast us?” Yancey said.
Rand looked at the sky. The sun was setting; the faint orange glow of its distant companion did little to counter the creeping twilight. Clouds over the nearby mountains obscured some of his view; smoke obscured even more. He looked up … there. A formation of pinpoint lights. Fusion candles. The Han invasion fleet, left in a higher orbit, was descending toward the planet.
Rand looked at Yancey. “We’ve got some time. But I don’t think they’ll be interested in tagging a lone pickup truck on a rural road. Now, anybody know how to hotwire a Ford?”
No one did. The Army needs a few good criminals, Rand thought to himself. He looked down the dirt road leading away from the ranch. The truck they would take back to the barracks at Fort Patton after an exercise came down that road.
“Then we’ll just have to hoof it,” he said.
Sequoia’s brief summer night was already ending. Rand checked the sky again … it held no ships that he could see. He thought it likely the Han bombardment and invasion craft were reforming into a single fleet on the far side of the planet.
“Did anyone grab any food?” PFC Yancey asked. “I’m gettin’ hungry.”
The question kicked off a flurry of conversation between the five privates about what they should do. Aguirre, hands on his hips, stared alternately at the privates and Rand.
Rand took the hint.
“Shut up!” he shouted. All eyes turned toward him.
Until now, Rand figured his job was to enable his guys do their jobs, make the decisions he had to, and leave discipline to his sergeants. Maybe that worked in the artillery tunnels. It was clear it wouldn’t work here.
“I’m going to say this once,” he said. “I know I run things pretty loosely, but let’s start shaping up, soldiers. We got a war on, and no friends nearby. Comprende?”
Backs straightened. “Yes, sir!” came a ragged chorus.
“Aguirre, take a detail and raid the fridge and the weapons locker down in the silo,” he said. “If any of the tunnels down there haven’t collapsed by now they probably won’t. Yancey, Lopez and I will hike up to the Hadley ranch and see if they can help us with anything. Back here in one hour.”
The Hadley ranch was deserted, the vehicles gone. They broke in, but the Hadleys must have had taken their food
and guns when they cleared out. Lopez did find some camping gear … Had the family gone into Cottonwood? Rand barely knew them.
They walked the four klicks back to the Pressman ranch and found Aguirre and the others emerging from the laser silo. They had turned up a few days of food and seven M7 carbines.
“There were more M7s, but I figured we wouldn’t need them,” Aguirre said. “The ammo locker was in a bad way; we only found two dozen magazines.”
He handed them out, and they started walking.
Rand checked his handheld. Cottonwood’s civilian internet was still down, but the brigade network remained up, with orders only to transmit in the event of enemy contact. They must be worried the Hans will track in on our transmissions.
Tiny lights filled the eastern sky, just ahead of the fast-rising sun. The second round of the Chinese bombardment of Sequoia was unimpeded by any American defenses. The warships raked lasers on concentrations of troops and surviving command centers. Police stations and colonial administration buildings took hits.
Not long after, the assault began. An aircraft carrier dropped unmanned entry vehicles that, after burning through the top of the atmosphere, released scores of fighter and attack drones to hunt American forces. Some drones died to surface-to-air lasers and missiles; the orbiting ships picked off the shooters as quickly as they could target them. Another orbit, and heavy, one-way drop pods broke off from their assault carriers, each bearing a company of troops, the unit’s supplies and a network hub.
The Chinese general in command of the operation, riding on a command ship perched in geosynch above Sequoia, wanted to take the continent in a single, decisive blow. Two divisions – 24,000 troops – would make the assault, securing the major transportation and communications nodes. The remnants of the American colonial force would be mopped up; submarines were delivering four additional brigades from the Chinese continents on Kuan Yin. All 200,000 Americans would be sent to the single large city, Sycamore, to await repatriation to another American world. Han colonists would follow, more to solidify China’s claim to the continent than to ease population pressure elsewhere on the planet.
