by Charles Lamb
AL:ICE
Space War
By CW Lamb
I would like to thank my wife for patiently waiting while I finished this book. Sometimes living with a writer (even a part time one) can be challenging.
Copyright © 2017 by CW Lamb
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
First Edition
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Cover Design: www.art4artists.com.au
Chapter 1
Colonel Jake Thomas stood in full combat gear, hidden behind a ridge on an alien planet, while peering over the edge to see a scraggly looking crater below. Above the crater and in all directions there was desolate landscape, with no movement to be seen, and that was just the way he liked it. There was some form of plant life sporadically sprouting here and there, hardly more than grass and small bushes. The rest of the landscape was mostly dirt and rock.
With him were two fire teams from Alpha Company, Second Platoon, First Squad, of his 1st Space Marine Expeditionary Force. In addition to those eight marines, there were an equal number of SAS troopers, a mix of British, Canadian, and Australian volunteers, giving him a total of 16 combat shooters.
Unlike previous operations, where the SAS troopers had the option of wearing whatever combat gear they desired, the current mission required them all to adopt the standard Marine off planet kit. Although the alien world they stood on was almost Earth like, the atmosphere wouldn’t support humans without a little assistance from technology. Both the air and the temperature were outside the normal human standards.
As expected, their battle suits had changed pattern and color to mask their presence on this world. With a gravity at 1.15 times Earth normal, the available powered battle suits were a nice assist for those who chose that option, though certainly not required. However, with this group, none would even consider using them, instead selecting the less cumbersome standard issue.
The suits were self-contained, with the EVA pack added to allow for extended use of the alien world. Jake had no desire to remain here any longer than the mission required, but they were prepared for an extended exposure should it be necessary. All of them were carrying an assortment of weapons drawn from the arsenal in the South Dakota Alice, newly named Dakota.
As this was their first mission against this unknown alien enemy, Jake was covering all his bases. Each shooter carried a primary weapon containing a combination of projectile and energy firepower. Secondary firepower was available in the form of sidearms and several crew served weapons Jake had specifically selected and assigned. These required more than one person to operate, thus the term crew served.
Trying to minimize his exposure to anyone below and using the magnification in his helmet like binoculars, Jake zoomed in on the activity in the crater. There, he could see about twenty small fighter-like spacecraft, each fitted with external weapons. Nearby were over one hundred aliens moving about, each in environmental suits of their own design. Many of them carried energy rifles identical to those previously captured from NeHaw warships.
“What do you think?” asked the SAS sergeant by his side, who had been receiving his helmet video feed. Jake had first met Sergeant Carson in London, during the first contact with the Brits there. The man had since volunteered for training in the US, which was how he ended up on this alien world with Jake.
“I think the Intel was good. These are definitely the guys.”
After the failed armada attack on Earth, an effort that had been contrived by the previous head of the NeHaw High Council, a group of their military officers had successfully executed a power grab. They had managed to overthrow the High Council in a coup and the outcome had left a splintered empire. Several worlds had thrown in with the Earth, while the remaining planets retreated to the relative safety of the known superpower.
Since then, a series of attacks and small skirmishes between the two sides resulted in chaos throughout the NeHaw Empire. For Jake, the escalation of hostilities was to be expected once it was confirmed the military now controlled NeHaw directly. Apparently, unlike their political predecessors, these leaders were creatures of direct action.
What most disturbed Jake most, however, was the new efficiency with which the NeHaw navy was operating. In several recent engagements, the Earth vessels, badly outnumbered as usual, had been held to a stalemate forcing them to withdraw. Even with their superior shielding and firepower, they were unable to ravage the NeHaw as before, their numbers being just too great.
Someone at the top now understood what they were facing, and was prepared to do what was necessary to confront and overcome. This is what brought Jake to his current location. A small group of NeHaw aligned ships had adopted the human concept of small attack fighters, and was now harassing Earth aligned shipping with lightning raids.
The hit and run tactics of the raiders had Jake scrambling to counter the damage they were doing to the treaty planets. The urgency had been such that, when Jake got word of a possible hidden base from an allied informant, he scrambled to put a strike team together.
It wasn’t just the aliens replicating Earth tactics that had proven so problematic, it was something else as well. In the few engagements between these fighters and the Earth aligned planets, reports of FTL drive failures were a constant. In every case, once the fighters appeared, the defenders needed to drive them off before FTL capabilities were restored. Jake was sure it wasn’t a coincidence.
The Marines and SAS troopers now with him had been training together in Texas, where Jake had the stealth ship stored. Newly christened the Phantom, it was the same vessel used for a previous spying mission in NeHaw space. On that mission, Ivan, Edwin and the NeHaw guest, HeBak, had discovered the alien armada that recently challenged Earth’s defenses.
With a quick 24-hour turnaround, Dallas, the local ALICE system, had refitted the ship for this mission and had them on their way. It would not have been a problem for him to recruit a larger force for the mission; it was just that this ship couldn’t support a larger number of troops for the journey.
The Phantom was considered a stealth ship because it had been fitted with a cloaking unit, replicated from the detained NeHaw ship, also currently stored in Texas. HeBak, a supposed NeHaw refugee, had been captured trying to flee Earth from a gold mining mission. Slipping onto the planet undetected, he had managed to accumulate enough wealth to secure a lofty retirement. However, his excitement overcame his caution, and he was discovered. While technically a guest and not a prisoner, he had elected to remain on Earth rather than face the new regime in power on the NeHaw home world.
The Phantom, then unnamed, had been ordered from the Wawobash with the specific intent of converting it into a spy ship. With minimal firepower on board, its intent was to slip in and out of hostile space, appearing as no more than a trade vessel should anyone come across them uncloaked. Its first mission had successfully proven the theory.
The four-day voyage to the edge of the solar system again reminded Jake of the need for a space station at the rim of the gravity well created by the sun. With the first station modules on order from the Wawobash- a race aligned with the Earth and the owners of a renowned shipyard- it was just a matter of time until one could be assembled. He had great hopes of its success as a base of operations. His design had taken into consideration not only the need for a supply and transfer base, but also an armed fort at the edge of civilization.
The trip to
the target world had taken several hours in FTL. With cloaking enabled, Jake was able to take the Phantom, with his combat team, and slip undetected into a canyon near the target location on the alien planet. They had been fortunate enough to follow several of the enemy ships down to the planet's surface, as they returned from some unknown mission. The cloaking unit continued to mask the ship’s current resting location, while the humans moved cautiously closer to their target.
Backing away from the edge, while leaving a Marine to continue observations, he pulled the rest of the team together. He had everyone on point-to-point communications to keep their emissions signature as low as possible.
“Look, I don’t want to get us too spread out, we may need to bug out as soon as we hit these guys. Intel says there isn’t another base on the planet, but I don’t want to push our luck.”
With that, Jake sketched out a diagram in the dirt, positioning his people on three sides of the crater, not directly opposite each other. Splitting off part of the group into two teams of six, with the remainder staying with him, he sent each to work their way around the edges of the crater. While they moved into position, he and his men watched the activity below, looking for signs of discovery.
The lack of sentries bothered him. He worried about the omission, questioning if they were using some unknown technology for perimeter security. While he waited, the two-man team next to him prepared the recoilless rifle they were going to use against the aliens below. Known to Jake as a Carl Gustav, slang for a recoilless rifle from Earth’s past, he taught the others the slang term when they were issued on Earth.
Each of the teams now moving into position carried two of these weapons as well, giving the entire force a significant amount of firepower. The goal was to take out the spacecraft, and as much of their support infrastructure as possible. Should the aliens attempt to mount an offensive, each team had two shooters to defend the recoilless teams as they rained havoc on the aliens.
Within minutes, he received two clicks and then three clicks over his communications link. The clicks indicated both teams were in position and ready. Peering over the ridge again, he scanned the rim on each side of the crater, but couldn’t see either team, which made him smile. All were in the prone position, and using bipods on the weapons, they would be invisible to those below until the last second.
With a thumbs up from his own team, the loader lying next to the gunner, Jake paused and then gave the attack order.
“GO!”
Almost in unison, Jake watched as five recoilless rounds streaked at blinding speeds toward the spacecraft parked below. The recoilless rounds of Jake’s era traveled at close to 1,000 feet per second. These, however, sped from the launcher at over three times that rate. Rather than just firing rocket-powered rounds, these recoilless guns were a combination of rocket launcher and railgun.
They would fire each round as a railgun, with the rocket igniting once it was well clear of the shooter. The initial railgun launch produced a measurable recoil, which was absorbed by the inertial dampeners each rocket tube had incorporated in their construction. This gave it a manageable experience when standing, and barely noticeable with the bipod in a prone position.
The incorporated railgun, however, allowed the rocket to clear the area near the shooter before firing its motor. Traveling at a considerable rate of speed, it then ignited, adding additional speed to the projectile. This also prevented any telltale exhaust evidence, giving away the shooter's position.
With amazing speed, all five guns launched a second volley of rounds at the targets below, with each team concentrating on their priority targets. The aliens were attempting to return fire, with energy blasts fired wildly in all directions. Jake resisted the temptation to take up arms himself as he watched a group of suited figures take refuge in a narrow space between buildings. Their return fire posed little threat, but it represented an attempt at organizing a defense.
Once all of the ships had been destroyed, Jake’s orders were that they should remove as many of the support structures as possible before retreating. He watched as structure after structure exploded with rocket impacts. It was during this part of the operation that a blinding flash erupted in the crater below, engulfing the entire area and throwing Jake and his men back from the rim of the crater.
Scrambling to get back on his feet, his rifle ready, he rushed back to the crater’s edge as his men rose around him. Scanning the area, with his rifle up and ready to fire, he noted that nothing in the area below was moving.
“Everyone, Sitrep!” he ordered on the open circuit, asking for their situation report.
“Team one, no casualties.”
“Team two, no casualties, whisky tango foxtrot Colonel? What the hell was that?” He got from one of the Marines.
“Acknowledged. I have no idea, we must have hit their gas station,” Jake replied as he verified his four men were standing nearby and unharmed. Lowering his rifle, he could see the troops now lining both rims of the crater, looking at the destruction before them. They had evidently hit some form of stored energy, as its release had obliterated everything in the crater below. All that remained was twisted wreckage and immobile bodies.
Checking the time, he set a timer, and then passed out orders.
“Sergeant Carson, you four are with me. Teams one and two, drop the Carl’s, and cover us. Shoot anything that moves. We are going shopping for Intel.”
----*----
General KaLob sat in his office at the Military High Command, reviewing the latest after action reports. As leader of the coup that had toppled the government of the NeHaw home world, he had no desire to occupy the seat, nor follow the examples, of those he had deposed. He was a military man, made in the mold of those that had conquered the vast sectors of space they were now struggling to retain.
The NeHaw had not seen an enemy like this in many gigacycles. This adversary was cunning and ruthless in battle, like the NeHaw once were. The NeHaw had become far too soft and decadent to deal with what lay before them. KaLob knew he needed to restore that heritage if they were to prevail.
His biggest challenge was in finding strong military leaders, uncorrupted by the ways of the politicians. He had found it necessary to execute the captains of more than half of his fleet and replace them with competent, capable combat oriented officers. Even now, some of those vessels still awaited their replacements.
His early appointments had already proven their value in several engagements with the enemy. While they had yet to see a total victory, any opportunity to drive the humans back was seen as a move in the right direction. The mystery of why the NeHaw firepower had such a minimal effect on their ships was yet to be discovered, but the combined attacks had proven effective at getting their attention.
That gave KaLob the hope that this enemy was not without limits, it was just that those limits had yet to be discovered. It was with that in mind, that he had redeployed his ships, focusing more on combat and confrontation, and less on tribute collection. There would be plenty of time for that, once the current crisis was resolved.
At present he had every compliant race working on new and innovative ways to overcome the human ships. Others were commanded to analyze and explain the technologies currently used by the humans. They had retrieved the projectiles they peppered NeHaw ships with, creating breaches in the toughest of shield plating. He only wished they could uncover the secret of their shields.
----*----
Sara was in the command center of the Nevada ALICE facility, feeling anxious, extremely irritated, and very uncomfortable, all at the same time. Well into her pregnancy, her sister Becky had notified her that she was to be the proud mother of twins. Becky was the head of the medical facility in Texas, but had returned to Nevada temporarily and appeared delighted at her sister’s situation.
Why, of all the women associated with Jake, Sara had the misfortune to bear twins, she had no idea. She felt she was being punished for her earlier insistence that Jake cut
off his relationships with the others. While delighted her wishes appeared to be coming true, as one woman at a time looked to be naturally distancing herself from him, it was offset by her current misery.
On top of her current personal physical discomfort, she was impatiently waiting on word from Jake. She was used to his running off at a moment’s notice, while dealing with things here on Earth, but this was something entirely different. This, though, was maddening as he had run off to an unknown planet deep in NeHaw space, based on intelligence from an untested alien informant. Why didn’t he see this was incredibly dangerous?
As she watched those working around her, she wondered if anyone but her was fretting over his absence.
“He will be alright,” Linda said as she approached Sara from behind. Her comment a clear indication that Sara must look as upset as she felt.
“Probably, which infuriates me more,” Sara replied as she turned to face the Nevada facility’s commander. Linda was one of the women distancing herself from Jake. While still the mother of his daughter, Tracy, she was not making any personal demands on Jake beyond that.
“Rough pregnancy?” Linda replied, acknowledging Sara’s frustration and changing the subject.
“I now completely understand Jake’s favorite term, be careful what you ask for,” she replied with a sigh.
“Ma’am, we have a message from Colonel Thomas,” one of the many analysts surrounding the two announced. Both Sara and Linda hurried over to see the console display.
“Mission Complete,” was all that was displayed on the monitor.
“Well, that’s good news,” Linda said with a smile.
“They won’t contact us again until they drop out of FTL at the edge of our solar system,” the analyst added, referring to traveling in faster than light mode. The mission plan had outlined a strict communications blackout, intended to reduce risk to the strike team.
