Stark’s Crusade

by John G. Hemry

  Clear of the minefields, the Jabberwocks came on. Stark caught his breath as he totaled up the numbers still in motion. Good Lord. How much did the government spend to buy all these things? Better not let ‘em get any closer before we start hurting them serious. “All units. Ladies and Gentlemen, let ‘em have it. Open fire.”

  An arc of fire blazed to life on three sides, hitting the Jabberwocks from the front and both flanks. Most of the fire missed, the mechanical bugs moving so quickly that combat systems couldn’t correct aim points fast enough. But so many weapons were firing that the front ranks of Jabberwocks collapsed into frozen uselessness.

  Despite the volume of fire pouring from three sides into the indentation in the front, the Jabberwocks kept coming, their scuttling shapes passing over the bodies of fallen robots like a horde of alien monsters. I wondered what it’d be like to meet something that wasn’t human. Well, we’ve met ‘em, and we’re fighting ‘em. Figures. He checked his scan, watching the wave of Jabberwock symbology closing swiftly on the improvised defensive line. “Vic, watch for any penetrations.”

  “I’m watching. They’re too close to you now for more artillery. I don’t want to risk a short round hitting our own line.”

  “Understood. We’ll take ‘em one-on-one.” Stark raised his own rifle, watching aiming points spring to life on his HUD as the linked targeting system activated. He fired carefully, picking his targets from the highest hit probabilities, cursing at the number of shots that missed as a Jabberwock used its inhuman speed to dart forward. The Jabberwocks were firing back, blasting off aimed shots without pausing, their accuracy still fortunately confused by the human soldiers’ active and passive defensive systems and by the amount of explosion-generated noise created by all the weapons being fired.

  A wave of Jabberwocks hit the center of the improvised line, running straight into a massive barrage of fire that dropped every one short of contact. But more scuttled forward, laying down rapid shots that forced Stark’s soldiers to take cover or die.

  One of Lamont’s tanks, its massive beetle-shaped carapace almost invisible against lunar shadow, found itself confronting a pair of Jabberwocks. The first opened fire immediately, its small-caliber rounds glancing off the tank’s armor in a brilliant cascade of sparks. The second Jabberwock, slightly back and to the side of the first, paused for a fraction of a second while a heavy anti-armor weapon dropped from the robot’s internal magazine onto a firing rail.

  The tank’s secondary cannon roared, cutting the first Jabberwock in half with a hail of shells. Its turret was swiveling to target the second bug when the antiarmor missile shot out. Point defenses opened up, not scoring a direct hit but diverting the missile slightly. The tank staggered as the missile hit home in a non-critical area, spraying fragments of armor. Then the tank’s main gun steadied and fired. This close, even the Jabberwock’s speed didn’t allow it to dodge the heavy shell. The robot simply vanished as the shell penetrated its armor and exploded inside, leaving the stumps of eight metal legs falling into dust littered with the wreckage of war.

  “Hey, you ground apes! How about a little covering fire here! It’s gonna take me forever to fix the hole in that tank!”

  Stark fired again even as he called out orders. “Ground soldiers. Screen Sergeant Lamont’s armor. You can nail the Jabberwocks while they’re trying to target the tanks.”

  A Jabberwock reared up nearby with shocking suddenness, dull metal and rapidly moving limbs rendering it a vague shape out of a nightmare, as it loomed against the endless black of the lunar sky. Stark was still bringing his rifle up when the soldier nearest him screamed in a combination of pain and rage, her suit broadcasting multiple penetrations as the Jabberwock fired a burst into her. Still screaming, the soldier fired on full automatic, her rounds winking in wild pyrotechnics off the head and carapace of the Jabberwock. The bug staggered, wobbling as other soldiers and Stark added their fire, its legs hunting frantically like a spider caught under a boot heel, then froze and fell over in a slow-motion collapse.

  Stark reached the wounded soldier first, her fingers still spasmodically tightening on the trigger of her empty weapon. “Take it easy. It’s dead.” Billings. Damn. He scanned her medical readout, then tagged her symbol for high-priority response by the medical teams. “Looks like you’ll make it.” If the medics get here quick enough. “Hang in there.” Please.

  “As long as I killed that bastard,” Billings spat, then collapsed from the load of drugs being pumped into her by her suit.

  “Ethan.”

  “Yeah, Vic.”

  “I’m getting individual Jabberwocks breaking through on the left. I’m moving APCs to intercept.”

  “Get some tanks with those APCs.” Stark fired again as he lay near the badly wounded shape of Private Billings, determined to guard her. “They can’t take the bugs alone. The Jabberwocks are too tough and too heavily armed.”

  “Roger. I’ll have to pull the tanks off the line. Everything’s committed.”

  Before Stark could answer, another Jabberwock jerked into view not far away, firing with four of its arms as it skittered toward them. Two brief bursts caught it on the head and side, then a lucky shot with a grenade knocked off two legs. The Jabberwock wove back and forth for a moment, firing erratically, then dropped.

  “Good shooting, Caruso.” Corporal Gomez, all business. “Chen, get yourself a couple meters over so you can cover the Sargento and Billings better. Dios! Here’s another one.”

  Stark cursed as the nearby soldiers engaged another Jabberwock, pulling his scan back so he could see the entire situation again. The dancing symbology that marked split-second detections of Jabberwocks made it hard to evaluate how many were left, but the number of kill symbols indicated they’d knocked out or destroyed scores. “Go ahead and pull the armor, Vic.” A sudden chill ran over him as he realized the move might be misinterpreted. “All units. Armor is being pulled off the line to reinforce a reaction force. We are not falling back.”

  His fear that the movement of the tanks would be misunderstood appeared misplaced as some unknown soldier immediately replied. “Hell, no, we ain’t!”

  Stark focused back on the immediate area, noting the absence of close-in targets. Symbols marked a half-dozen disabled Jabberwocks scattered close to his position. The nearest soldiers were prone in the thin dust, firing single, carefully aimed shots at Jabberwocks still advancing against other portions of the line. Like those things that went after the blockade runners. Single-minded. Keep going after the target until it’s destroyed. The flickering detections were few now, most on the left, some behind the line. Infantry was scrambling off the line, alarming Stark until he realized they were moving to target the Jabberwocks who’d made it through the defenses.

  APC symbols converged on one of the Jabberwocks. Stark switched scans to view the action through the APC gunner’s view on the APC’s targeting system, he could see the hunted Jabberwock’s symbology flash there/not-there as the bug dodged rapidly among the rocks. A moment later, a nearby APC shuddered as the Jabberwock poured fire into it, the armored vehicle sliding to the surface while broadcasting damage alarms.

  The other APCs fired, raking the area around the Jabberwock even as it continued to fire at the wounded APC. The robot sidestepped too fast to follow, trying to avoid the defenders’ fire as it maintained a fanatical focus on destroying the APC it had targeted.

  A tank hove into view, its weapons searching for the Jabberwock, then locking on. The Jabberwock, finally satisfied with the damage wrought on the stricken APC or perhaps sensing a new threat, spun to attack the tank, but as it did so, several rounds hit home from different angles. Staggering to one side, the Jabberwock frantically tried to regain its balance, temporarily unable to evade the incoming fire. A moment later, the bug was riddled by APC fire, then its broken carcass was slapped to one side by a cannon shell from the tank.

  Stark pulled his view back again, breathing heavily from the stress of action. One o
r two Jabberwocks were still moving, still coming onward, but first one and then the second froze. A final burst of fire into the immobile remains followed, then silence fell as the defenders vainly sought new targets.

  We did it. Good God in Heaven, we did it. Human soldiers, one. Jabberwocks, zero. “Vic, I read the attack stopped dead.”

  “I concur. No movement apparent. I’m deactivating the minefields so our forces can reoccupy the front line.”

  “Roger. Get those units moving.” He paused, tasting something bad in his mouth. “I’ll need a casualty count.”

  “You’ll get one.”

  Stark spun to see where he’d left Private Billings, sagging with relief as he saw her being carried to a waiting ambulance. “She gonna make it?”

  One of the medics answered without halting his careful maneuvering of the mobile stretcher. “Yes, sir. She’ll be stabilized within a couple of minutes.”

  “Thanks. Anita?”

  “Sí, Sargento.”

  “How many?”

  A pause, whether to count or to compose herself, Stark didn’t know. “One dead. Two wounded, one of those serious.”

  Stark extrapolated that, comparing the number of Jabberwocks they’d personally nailed against the number of casualties suffered by Gomez’s platoon. Maybe we didn’t lose too many. “They done good, Corporal Gomez. You’ve kept ‘em real sharp.”

  “Gracias, Sargento. We gonna go after that base now?”

  “I’m not planning on it.” Stark walked slowly back to the command APC, wishing once again that the vehicle had been armed so that its firepower could have aided in their defense. One more thing I gotta do someday. “How’s it look, Vic?”

  “Reoccupation of the front line is proceeding without any trouble, except for that one bunker that the bugs nuked. I’ll put some armor near there to cover the gap.” He could hear the relief in her voice, the winding down of tension ratcheted up by the recent battle. “So, Ethan, ‘thou hast slain the Jabberwock’?”

  He looked over the barren lunar landscape, back toward where the headquarters complex lay buried beneath the ancient rock. “What?”

  “ ‘Thou hast slain the Jabberwock.’ It’s a quote, you oaf. From Alice through the Looking Glass.”

  I guess that’s where that Bander-whatsit stuff comes from, too. “How come you remember something like that?”

  “They were my favorite books when I was a little girl.”

  “That’s a surprise. That’s like, Alice in Wonderland, right? Some little dressed-up Brit girl? You liked that?”

  “I liked the idea of a girl wandering around exploring strange, new worlds on her own. What’s wrong with that? Mind you, I always thought Alice should have been more heavily armed before she started on those expeditions, just in case any of the weirdoes she met happened to turn out hostile.”

  “Now that part ain’t a surprise.” Stark checked his scan again, pulling it far back to see a good section of the front. His laughter died as Stark stared at a corner of the scan showing activity behind the enemy lines. He centered the display on it, focusing the scan. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Where? Let me see your scan. You mean that stuff on the flanks of the Mixing Bowl?”

  “Yeah. I mean that stuff.” Scan provided only a scattered picture at that range, showing those traces of enemy activity that could be spotted across the distance, but increasingly large concentrations of enemy symbology seemed to be easing into position, carefully screening themselves from the official American forces occupying the Mixing Bowl. “What are they doing? Are they planning to throw enemy forces against us, too?”

  “Ethan, if those enemy units were going to be used against us, they’d be more concerned about screening themselves from us, not from the official forces. Look at their movements. When there’s a choice of screening terrain, they’re choosing the route that masks them from the Mixing Bowl.”

  “Why? What the hell are they doing?”

  “They’re getting ready to hit the official forces. Look. To the south, too. We haven’t got as good a view there, but something’s going on.”

  Stark tried to rub his face, his armored hand slapping against his face shield instead. “A double-cross. Why now?”

  “Why now? That’s easy. Think about it from the enemy’s perspective. The official American forces hit us, we hit back, both groups are weakened, then the people that don’t like any of us hit what’s left in the Mixing Bowl and roll over it. After that, they hope, they hit the defenses here, which the Jabberwocks have already softened up, and take the Colony. One, two, three strikes and we’re out.”

  “Damn. We can’t let that happen.”

  “No, I don’t expect we can. How do we stop it?”

  “We’ve got to help ‘em. The guys in the Mixing Bowl. They don’t have enough forces in there to hold off surprise attacks from both flanks. Not in that terrain.”

  “No, they don’t. Think carefully, though, Ethan. No matter how we try to help, we’re going to have to open our defenses here. We’re going to have to commit forces that may get shot at by both those enemy forces and by the Mixing Bowl defenders. Worst case, we’ll be seriously weakened. We might lose the Colony trying to save the official force. And if we do save them, they might still try to take us.”

  “Yeah.” Stark stared outward, above the barren black/white/gray of the lunar terrain, outward to where the white and blue bannered disc of Earth hung in the blackness, memories cascading through his mind yet somehow leaving a single clear thought. “Yeah. I know all that. But I’m an American, Vic. We all are. The idiots running the country can’t change that no matter how much they screw up everything else. And for once, for damned all once, I ain’t gonna let everybody else pay for the dumb things our bosses decided were smart. We’re gonna save those apes in the official force, and we’re gonna see ‘em safe home, so they can look out for the civs on Earth like they’re supposed to.”

  “And if those apes thank us by taking over the Colony? Our troops won’t fire on Second Division soldiers, Ethan, not even to save themselves. You know that.”

  He took a deep breath, eyes still fixed on Earth. Somewhere on that ball, somewhere beneath the white clouds, everything he’d been raised to care about waited on his decision. There wasn’t any ice filling him this time, just a steady warmth that seemed to come from somewhere other than his suit’s heating system. “Yeah. I know that, too. What else can we do, Vic? We got orders from the Colony leader, remember? Don’t let the official force get blown away. Those are our orders and our priorities. And those orders make sense, Vic. What’s the alternative? Leave home without anybody to defend ‘em? If this much of Second Division gets trashed, what’s left couldn’t defend the borders. The guys who are double-crossing ‘em up here will go after our country back home sure as hell. We took an oath, Vic. Protect the Constitution. Nothing we’ve done yet has really violated that. Home, the Constitution, they’ve been safe. But if we let those apes die, if we let everybody with a grudge against the U.S. of A. walk in to take whatever piece they think they’re owed, what then? It’ll all be over. I won’t let that happen, even if I have to walk by myself over there and fight on my own.”

  “You won’t be alone, Ethan.” After a brief pause, she continued. “We’ve got one ace we can play. Stacey just notified me she managed to plant it.”

  “Plant it? Plant what?”

  “Remember the worm Stace found in our systems after the raid on our headquarters? The one that would’ve mirror-imaged our IFF so our friends looked like enemies and vice versa? Her computer geeks were able to modify that worm so the watchdogs in the official systems shouldn’t recognize it and so it’ll make us look just like them on their IFF.”

  “No kidding? That’s one nice worm.”

  “Stacey thought it might come in handy. With that, I can load a battalion on shuttles and shoot them over the front. Drop that battalion where it can help stop the surprise attack. That’s not enough, but it
should do the job until somebody else can get over there.”

  “Do it. Thanks, Vic. For setting this up, and for agreeing with me on doing this.”

  “Don’t thank me, you idiot. I spent my whole career hoping for a leader who cared more about ideals than their own self-interest. So I got you. Serves me right. Let’s try not to get killed.”

  “Deal.”

  He stood next to the APC, pondering what his decision might do to the soldiers who had trusted and followed him to this point. I’ll tell ‘em what I’m doing and why. They deserve to know that. “All units. This is Stark. We’ve spotted enemy forces moving to attack the Mixing Bowl on both flanks. They’re planning on nailing the apes from Second Division and then maybe coming after us here. We’d be safe if we just stayed here behind our lines, but the Second Division grunts won’t stand a chance without our help. I’m planning on helping them. That might mean the official force can take us down afterwards. But at least they’ll be alive and able to help defend the U.S. back home. If they go down here, our country won’t stand a chance. I hope you’ll all follow me.” He began walking toward the front line, deciding to dispense with the command APC.

  “Sargento! Not on point, Sargento. Let a private do that.” Gomez waved a soldier forward, then brought the rest of the platoon alongside Stark at a trot. “You ain’t goin’ over there alone.”

  “Thanks, Anita.”

  They moved up and over the low ridge, giving them a direct view of the dead zone. “They say it gets real cold in the Leavenworth stockade,” Gomez mused. “We’ll have to pack overcoats and stuff. Bet it’s not as cold as here, though.”

  “No, I bet it ain’t. Of course, I’d probably get a firing squad, not a prison cell.”

  “Verdad. But they say hell is real warm. You won’t have to worry about no overcoat. You can pack light.”

  Stark laughed. “And I’ll have plenty of friends waiting for me there. Nice to have you along on this walk, compadre.”