by H. T. Kofruk
“Sir, the Red Sea is getting concentrated attack from an enemy mothership” reported the communications officer, referring to the fleet’s largest and most heavily armed cruiser.
Looking at the holograph of the battle raging at the rear of the fleet Rick ordered three of the closest ships to assist the IGN Red Sea. His view quickly switched to the two enemy motherships and the main wormhole station. One of the station’s two wormhole creators had been damaged during the few seconds he had focused elsewhere. But the defending forces were doing well in protecting the other one. The way the shock shields were opening and closing reminded Rick of a colony of jellyfish swimming in the oceans of Earth. A swarm of Tiger Shark fighters emerged from the station, some of them undoubtedly armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
He observed the other battles raging around Lordsphere and decided that the enemy would be overcome, and the damage limited. The white luxury space station built in the lower orbit of the planet was remarkably intact. The rich tourists who were staying there were probably frightened and entertained at the same time. After all, how often does a civilian witness a naval battle in space of this scale? They might even think it was a holograph show that made up a surprise part of the package.
Many of the tourists did in fact enjoy the show. One tipsy woman dressed in a richly embroidered evening dress went so far as to scream for a larger explosion. Her husband, a rich merchant, arrived just in time to grab her arm as she fell. Obviously bored of her husband’s presence, she slapped him lightly on the face and then slumped.
Her wish soon came true, however, and she was among the first to encounter heat equivalent to that of a sun, which followed an explosion that equalled several million strategic nuclear missiles going off at once. The source of the explosion was a lone fusion missile that was launched from a similarly lone Chinese cruiser. No one really noticed the cruiser’s approach since it had appeared through a wormhole which opened about two megametres away and then used its light speed drive to approach Lordsphere. As soon as it arrived, it launched a single missile then disappeared through another wormhole.
Rick was fortunate enough to see this on one of the smaller holograph projections. In the following split second, he realized it could only be a fusion missile; a single nuclear missile would not have been worth it since the target it was heading for didn’t hold much value; it was directly below the civilian wormhole station but it was mostly ocean and Command was located on the opposite side of the planet. To go to that length to have a clear shot meant it was something much more powerful, enough to take the planet and all the surrounding Atlantic forces with it.
A couple seconds before the missile hit the planet, effectively shifting it out of its orbital path and creating an explosion which would then become self-perpetuating, in other words a small star, Rick was able to scream out “All ships, LIGHT SPEED!”
Chapter 37: Hokkaido
‘Fighting in the gravitational and atmospheric constraints of a rocky planet and fighting in the vacuum of space are very different experiences. That is why army soldiers and warplanes are stationed for longer periods to get accustomed to the environment while the most valuable trait of deploying marines and navy fighters is quick adaptability.’ – Secretary of Defence Pierre Speck, year 2811
Sergeant First Class Anton Sagawa was not happy that the Pacific Federation had chosen to abstain from the war. The government mechanism was meant to put the now-dead president’s executive power in the hands of the prime minister. But alas, the role of the prime minister was always weak, being merely a rotating position between the twenty-three heads of state. Without a properly elected president of the whole Pacific Federation, the Federal Government would be dysfunctional. Only now, with the Federation under attack, did the nation-states begin to appreciate the gravity of the situation. Non-participation in the war meant the Atlantic Alliance was up against both the Chinese and the Orthodox. And once the Atlantic was beaten? Would the Chinese suddenly forget the bad blood between them and the Pacific?
The Sapporo Massacre was still engraved in the collective memories of all Japanese. Anton was a native of Hokkaido and only six years old when the Sino-Pacific War had erupted. He remembered the footage of tens of thousands of refugees arriving to Japan from Korea as the northern city of Kangye was crushed and Pyongyang and even Seoul were in danger. Japan was bombarded to a lesser extent except the northernmost islands of Sakhalin and Hokkaido where the infrastructure was heavily damaged but the sparse population had only led to a few hundred casualties. That was the official Chinese version of the war. In reality, a rogue Chinese colonel had led several thousand commandos into Sapporo and created a bloodbath comparable to the worst in history. Three hundred thousand civilians had been killed by guns or gas. The word ‘Nanjing’ was painted everywhere, even carved on the breasts of women. Japan’s past had come to haunt it again.
Anton’s parents had died in those few days, leaving him an orphan. The state welfare policy ensured he still had a decent upbringing in one of the government orphanage but as soon as he turned eighteen, he left for Okinawa to become a member of the famed Okinawan regiment.
And now, Hokkaido was in danger again. Reinforced by two battalions of Thai infantrymen and two squadrons of Filipino Cobra II fighter-bombers, the Okinawan regiment, which was comprised of five infantry and one artillery battalions, moved swiftly in the night. The Chinese forces had been seen thirty miles to the north, and it seemed were busy making a perimeter. After advancing half the distance, the artillery battalion stopped and prepared for bombardment while the infantrymen advanced another five miles. With a little bit of hope, the satellite scans would only detect random movements and perhaps the confident Chinese troops would not even pay heed to them. When the infantrymen were five miles from the enemy, the artillery battalion started showering the enemy with pulse cannon fire. In motion detection mode, his visor showed clearly how the pulse slanted upward from the cannons and then sharply swerved downward to impact the target at an almost ninety-degree angle.
Hover-drones shot out from the Chinese direction, only to be intercepted by Japanese snipers. The soldiers advanced quickly in the dark. The noise of amplifier movement and the thud sound of armoured boots hitting the ground filled the night. Travelling at over a hundred and fifty miles per hour, the infantrymen would be on the Chinese defence position in a matter of minutes.
The night sky suddenly became emblazoned by large shooting stars, however, which meant the Chinese had detected the ground troop movement and their Phoenix fighters were entering the atmosphere from a space station.
“Phoenix fighters spotted in the west. Request assistance” someone radioed to the Filipino squadrons.
“Already on our way” was the reply.
From the number of shooting stars, he estimated the Phoenix would outnumber the Cobras two-to-one. But the Cobra pilots were veterans in terrestrial warfare, which differed vastly from battles in space where there was no gravity, no friction, no obstacles and no up or down.
Captain Sara Mendoza was one of these veterans. She knew that flying within the gravitational, atmospheric range of a planet was much tougher than in a vast black vacuum. Her body was in a shock-proof compartment in the heart of the Cobra and her brain was connected to the fighter’s cameras and sensors. While flying, the fighter became her body. She saw two hundred Phoenix about thirty miles away. They were already shooting their pulse cannons, perhaps not knowing that the air density made the effective range of pulses about twenty miles, less than a tenth than in a vacuum.
At twenty miles away from the enemy, she opened fire. Just as expected, four enemy fighters shot out shock shields. In space, a shock shield would dissolve in three seconds; on Earth they didn’t dissolve at all unless shot at. Three of the four fighters got tangled in their own shock shields. One of them even crashed into another fighter as the pilot panicked. After seeing four of their own going down without even a fight, the Phoenix pilots started feeling uncertainty
creeping in their minds. Before they knew it, the Cobras were on them.
The Cobras released their drones before the Phoenix. With the air suddenly full of small but deadly aircraft, some of the Chinese pilots tried to manoeuvre as if they were in space, with disastrous results. One of them tried to bank a sharp left while flying at Mach four, effectively ripping apart the fighter. Many of the Phoenix drones were also deployed while their parent fighters were flying too fast, which sent them tumbling.
Within half an hour, the Chinese had already lost almost half their fighters. The panic from fighting in the unfamiliar atmospheric conditions had many of them forgetting even elementary details, such as deploying drones or not using shock shields.
Down on the ground, the Thai-Japanese forces were almost on top of the Chinese invaders. Disoriented by the sudden bombardment, the Chinese marines struggled to create a proper line of defence. Sporadic cannon fire burst from the Chinese camp but they did little damage to the Pacific forces who were moving with their amplifiers at full speed. At a click away, the Pacific soldiers shot out gas canisters to hide their true numbers and movement patterns from visual, thermal or motion scanning. As soon as the smoke screen was thick enough, rockets shot out from the packs they were carrying on their backs, creating more death and confusion in the Chinese camp.
Flares were shot out by Chinese marines to shed light on the advancing enemy, but all they saw was a white wall of smoke. For a few seconds, the bombardment stopped and aerial shock shields were finally launched, only to float down unharmed back to the ground, being more of a nuisance than protection. The marines were now trying to regroup to face the enemy that would emerge from the smoke. Officers shouted orders and lines were partially formed.
But before any meaningful preparations were concluded, thousands of Pacific soldiers burst out from the smoke, firing their pulse rifles. A Chinese laser cannon charged and fired, taking out ten Pacific soldiers. Anton was thrown to the ground but bounced immediately back up. Using the launcher attached to his rifle, he sent out a pulse grenade towards the laser cannon. The shock wave was enough to dent the cannon and render it useless for the time being.
The enemy was only a hundred metres away now, lying on their bellies while firing at the advancing infantrymen. Using their amplifiers, Anton and his comrades jumped this distance. While in mid-air, they slung their double-barrelled rifles across their backs and took out their close-combat weapons. For the Japanese, the standard weapon was katana-shaped hyper-vibrating swords. At two feet, the black blades were short for katana but their edges were reinforced with grey geratinium, enabling them to cut through armour relatively easily with the right training. The Thai soldiers, on the other hand, wielded two thin, single-edged daabs, each about a foot and a half long.
Anton brought down his sword at full impact on a Chinese pulse rifle that the owner was trying to use to block the deadly blow. It sliced cleanly through the rifle but didn’t go right through the helmet of the Chinese marine, who was staggering from the impact. Before he could recover, Anton pried his weapon out and swiped it at the enemy’s neck where the armour was thinner in order to allow more mobility. He only got through two thirds of the neck but that was enough. Another Chinese marine pointed his rifle at Anton’s chest, but he was able to twist his torso so that the pulse only lightly grazed his chest armour. He threw his blade at the marine and it buried itself in the visor.
He jumped to recover his weapon from the sagging marine’s face. As soon as it was in his hand, he desperately parried a stab from a Chinese jian. The wielder was obviously highly trained in its use and with a flowery motion immediately drew an arc with the straight sword and expertly brought it down towards where Anton’s shoulder met his neck. Anton quickly moved his body to the right so the blade would land on his thick shoulder armour. Although the hyper-vibrating blade managed to cut through a good deal, the armour proved too thick. Before he could pry out the blade, Anton punched the Chinese marine in the visor, making him lose his grip on the weapon. Slightly dazed, the marine stepped back a pace and a half and blindly threw a clumsy blow. Anton ducked the blow and soon his katana entered the marine’s lower abdomen and made itself upwards beneath the rib cage and into his heart.
Anton looked around and saw to his left a Thai soldier being hacked at by two Chinese marines. To his right a Japanese soldier just lost his face after a pulse shattered his visor. More to the right, two more Japanese soldiers were stabbing down at their respective victims who were probably already dead. More and more Pacific troops were arriving and the Chinese retreated. Anton estimated that they had overcome perhaps ten thousand enemy soldiers, killing perhaps a third. He guessed with the casualties, the combined Pacific force numbered about eight thousand including the artillery.
Sara was having a tougher time. Despite their initial disorder, the Chinese fighters were starting to fight back and the Cobras were still outnumbered. As she turned she saw a glimpse of the sun rising to the east. But when she faced north again, she was horrified to see another hundred or so shooting stars. ‘Damn it!’ she thought to herself. Her computer counted that she had downed five Phoenix fighters. There were sixty-eight Cobras still fighting against eighty-four Phoenix. But if the number of enemy fighters swelled again, there would be no way to overcome them. The soldiers on the ground would then be vulnerable to attack from the air.
She had to try though. If the Chinese took Korea, Japan and Vietnam, the rest of the Pacific Federation would be vulnerable, even the man-made island of Pacifica. Her home town of Vigan in the north of the Philippines was far from the action but the mere idea of being dominated by the Han Imperial Family and consequently losing all her freedom and being forced to worship an idolized emperor was more than she could take. She grit her teeth and decided she would take down as many of the enemy as she could so her compatriots and other member states of the Pacific Federation could fight a weakened enemy once they muster their strength.
The Pacific ground forces had lined up again and were pursuing the fleeing Chinese marines. Some were leaving ground mines as the fled north but they didn’t have time to properly conceal them, leaving them exposed for destruction. It was early May and the night was quite cool but that didn’t stop Anton from sweating profusely inside his armour and amplifier suit. The Chinese probably didn’t have time to set up any mobile generators, which meant that the marines didn’t benefit from wireless energy transfer. At the current speed, their energy cells were bound to dry up soon. When they did, they would no longer be able to run.
The terrain changed from open plains to low forested mountains. Fighting in a thick forest would be tricky since motion or thermal detection became close to useless. It would also be easy for the Chinese to booby-trap or ambush the pursuing forces. At the edge of the forest, the Pacific forces slowed down.
Major Shinohara, the battalion operations commander, attempted to contact the artillery battalion using their call signs from Japanese mythology. “Uzume, this is Fujin. Come in Uzume.” There was no reply. He repeated two more times but still no answer.
Anton didn’t feel good about this. The artillery battalion could travel almost as fast as infantry and they should have followed after the first attack. What could have happened to them without them even having enough time to contact the main force?
The answer became clear after the few seconds the regiment stood indecisively. A group of Thai solders suddenly disappeared into the earth and a severed head was thrown out after a few shouts. A Japanese soldier not two metres from Anton suddenly found himself dangling by his ankle as a strange alien appeared from the ground on which he had stood. The alien flung the soldier against a large pine tree with such a force that the trunk broke into two.
Anton had only seen intelligent aliens once when he was in basic training on another planet and even that had been from afar. But an intelligent alien soldier on Earth? That broke virtually every convention between the empires. The sudden appearance of the large, armoured al
ien mesmerized him for a split second before his combat instinct woke him. But just as he lifted his rifle, the alien punched him with lightning speed, sending him flying backwards into another group of soldiers.
He knew he was bleeding internally due to the blood gurgling in his throat, threatening to suffocate him. Before he lost consciousness, he heard rapid pulse fire, and then screams.
Though her brain was focused on her fighter, Sara also felt the sweat on her body. The Chinese reinforcements had worked well; there were still well over a hundred Phoenix in the air compared to just two dozen Cobras. She had depleted her shock shields, drones and rockets.
“Captain, shouldn’t we retreat?” asked one of her pilots. Instinct, numbers and firepower all indicated that this was sound advice. But without the Cobras in the air, the ground troops would be pinned down.
Instead of replying, she tried to contact the ground command. “Fujin, this is Raiden, over.” Silence followed. “Fujin, this is Raiden, over” she repeated. During the four and half seconds, she lost two more fighters.
She had no time to think what had happened to the Pacific ground forces. With eighty losses, they had downed nearly two hundred enemy fighters. She should have been satisfied but she instinctively knew this would be the first of many retreats they would make in the following Earth Wars. The future of the Pacific Federation and Earth was dark.
Chapter 38: Warsaw
‘When will we learn?’ – Lieutenant General Chen Xing, personal diary, year 2920
