by Bob Blanton
◆ ◆ ◆
“What a gift,” General McFarland said as they started the debrief for the day. “How utterly stupid to launch an attack without probing the enemy defenses first. And after we took out their bombers.”
“That sure helped balance the tank numbers,” Liz said.
The general snorted. “Not even close. The Russians’ reserves have over twenty times the number of tanks they lost. I’m sure they’re shipping them to the front right now, along with a new general.”
“Twenty times!” Catie gasped.
“Yes, and they won’t be putting them into nice little formations for our Foxes to shoot up,” the general added. “Now they’ll spread their attacks across the entire border, hitting the Ukrainians in fifteen or twenty locations at once. That will neutralize much of the advantage that the Foxes give us.”
“Won’t the Ukrainians have the advantage of being in a defensive position?” Kal asked.
“Yes, but those T-64 tanks can’t take a hit from the Russian T-80s or even their T-72s, while the Russian tank can probably withstand a direct hit from a T-64. Their reactive armor really makes a big difference,” the general explained. “Add that to their ability to field more tanks, and the numbers don’t look good.”
“We could give the Ukrainians railguns,” Catie said.
“How?” Kal asked.
“Just make them. They can mount them on their armored vehicles,” Catie said. “Nothing says they have to be in a Fox.”
“But how would we power them? And the recoil?” Blake asked.
“You’d have to include a small reactor, but we already have a design that requires us to re-enable it every twenty-four hours, or it fuses into a solid block of nothing,” Catie said. “That way, we won’t risk losing the technology.”
“Fred, how many can we make?” Marc asked.
“Just a moment,” Fred said. “Thanks, Catie,” he added as she sent him the design file.
“We have enough material to make one hundred,” Fred said. “We could have twenty ready in two days, the rest by the end of the day, Monday.”
“Get on it,” Marc said.
“And the recoil?” Blake asked again.
“Have them mount a big weight on rails. If it can move a few feet, it’ll help balance the recoil,” Catie said. “They use them on buildings in earthquake zones.”
“Clever,” murmured McFarland.
“One other thing,” Catie said.
“Yes,” the general scoffed.
“Will you ever learn?” Samantha whispered.
“If the Russians have better tanks and they’re resupplying them to the line, why don’t we take them out before they get there?” Catie asked.
“And how would we do that?” the general asked, his tone was still derisive.
“I was reading a book about how the British kept destroying the tanks being sent to Rommel during the North African campaign in World War II. They had to transport the tanks on the road on semi-trailers,” Catie said. “They should be easy to spot.”
“You’re right, we should at least start destroying as many convoys as we can,” the general said.
“But . . .”
“Admiral McCormack, can we set up surveillance to identify convoys moving tanks to the front?” the general asked.
“General!” Samantha scolded. “If you would start to listen to the advice and ignore your prejudice relating to the source, I think we would all do better!”
The general looked at Samantha, stunned that she would address him that way.
“Now, I believe that Catie had something to add,” Samantha said.
“Yes,” Catie said. “If they’re on a hard road, then we can land Oryxes on it. If you minimize the fuel load, an Oryx can take off with two tanks in its cargo hold.”
“Preposterous,” the general sputtered.
“Why?” Marc demanded.
“Because . . . because it will probably work,” the general said. “Can those Oryxes take off like a C17?”
“Yes,” Catie said.
“General Kealoha, do you have the personnel to handle this type of action?” the general asked.
“Oh yeah, I sure do,” Kal said.
“How do we insert them?” the general asked.
“A Hover Lynx,” Kal said.
“What?”
“Like a Fox, but it can carry fifteen soldiers,” Kal said. “Fred, how many do we have?”
“Eight,” Fred said.
“That’s more than enough, I’ll start mission planning right away.”
“Captain McCormack, I apologize,” the general said.
“Thank you, general,” Catie said.
Samantha breathed a sigh of relief as the meeting broke up.
February 4th – 0200 EET
A Hover Lynx dropped down beside the highway in Russia. Its rear door opened, and thirteen Delphinean commandos jumped out. They quickly took up positions on both sides of the highway and waited.
Sergeant Barry Knox spotted the convoy that their satellite had identified earlier in the day. “Whew,” he thought, “at least they didn’t decide to stop for the night somewhere back there.”
He waited as the convoy started to pass his team. When he could see the armored vehicle bringing up the rear, he signaled his team.
“Bring her in,” Barry ordered.
Kasper lowered his Hover Fox between the last semi-trailer and the armored vehicle that was at the rear of the convoy. He turned his lights on and fired off a short burst with the machine gun to get the driver’s attention.
Right after the vehicle stopped, Barry’s team was up next to it with their weapons in clear view, waving the driver and passengers out. Having heard the rumors of what the Foxes did to their tanks during the first assault, the Russian driver of the armored vehicle immediately stopped his vehicle and climbed out with his arms in the air, even while his colleagues were still trying to figure out what was going on. A second Hover Fox made the same maneuver on the leading armored vehicle with Beta team collecting the prisoners.
The prisoners had their hands zip-tied behind their backs and were led off to the side of the road where one of the commandos stood guard over them.
“Start unloading those tanks!” Barry ordered. “Graciela, back this vehicle up. One mile down the road.”
“Yes, sir,” Graciela grumbled. She was going to have to hike back up the road. With the armored vehicle maintaining a two-hundred-meter gap between itself and the last truck, she was going to have the longest hike. “Next time we’re practicing hand-to-hand, I’m going to kick Barry’s ass,” Graciela thought.
There were eight semi-trailers in this convoy, each with two tanks on them. “Quite a haul,” Barry thought.
Once the tanks were unloaded, the team backed the armored vehicles and the semi-trailer rigs one mile down the road. Then a Hover Oryx that had been converted to a bomber dropped tank parts they had salvaged from the first Russian attack over each of the rigs, then a Fox came in and blew everything up with its railgun. The plan was to fool the Russians into thinking the convoy had been destroyed instead of highjacked.
By this time, eight Oryxes were sitting on the highway waiting for the tanks to be driven into their cargo holds. One hour after they started, the last Oryx flew off toward the Ukrainian lines. The Russian prisoners were secured aboard the Oryxes.
“Alright, load up!” Barry yelled as the Hover Lynx landed to pick up his team. “We have enough time to do this again before it gets light.”
“Oorah!” the team yelled.
February 4th – 0800 EET
“How many convoys got through?” General McFarland asked.
“We counted four,” Kal said. “Three of them into Donbass region in southeastern Ukraine where they were met by the so-called Ukrainian rebels.”
“Russia has abandoned all pretext that those aren’t Russian soldiers,” the general said. “So, we captured two convoys and destroyed three.”
“Correct.”
“Railguns?”
“The first twenty are being delivered now,” Fred said. “They’ll reach the battlegroups you selected before nightfall in Ukraine.”
“Excellent,” the general said.
February 6th – 2000 CKT
“What’s our status?” Marc asked as they started the briefing.
“The railguns have made a big change. The Ukrainians have halted the Russian advance,” Kal reported.
“It won’t last long,” General McFarland said. “The Russians will adapt. This is a slugfest, and the one with the most men, armor, and weapons usually wins.”
“What would you suggest, General?” Marc asked.
“You need to start using those plasma cannons to strafe the enemy positions. If you start killing enough Russian soldiers, it will impact their morale. Trained soldiers are harder to replace. The Russians have huge stockpiles of weapons from the Soviet days, but eventually, they’ll run out of men willing to be baked alive,” the general said.
“I’m not willing to sanction the wholesale slaughter of the enemy,” Marc said. “They’re just following orders and are not to blame for this situation.”
“Then you’re sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of the Ukrainian forces,” the general said. “They’re standing their ground, but they’re paying for it in lives.”
“Let’s see how the railguns impact the battle,” Marc said.
Chapter 31
Something Has to Change
February 8th – 1300 CKT : 1810 EST
“For more on the war in Ukraine, we go to Christine Bradshaw, our war correspondent at the front,” the news anchor said.
“This is Christine Bradshaw, in Ukraine. If you happen to be in Kyiv, you might not realize there is a war being waged a little over one hundred miles from there. The citizens in Kyiv seem confident that they will win this war.
“But if you travel here to the front, you’ll find devastation everywhere. Farms and villages have been destroyed by Russian artillery. Field hospitals are overflowing with casualties, both civilian and military. Specialized hospitals have been set up just to handle children, many of them orphaned by the war. They arrive at the hospitals with injuries ranging from shrapnel wounds to missing limbs. Here are a brother and sister, five and seven years old. They lost their entire family when an artillery shell destroyed their home. The boy has lost his left arm; his sister has lost both her feet.
“You can hear the artillery firing throughout the night. The Russian guns are buried to protect them from the Delphinean fighters. They only uncover for as long as it takes to fire off a few rounds before they are covered up again to avoid being destroyed by one of the fighters. The sporadic firing goes on continuously, day and night as the Russians slowly inch their way forward, sometimes, only gaining a few hundred yards in a day.
“Some of the peasants here say they wish the Ukrainian government would just surrender. Which government is in charge doesn’t impact their lives that much, but the war is tearing this land apart,” Christine said.
“Christine, if the Russians continue to advance, why are the people in Kyiv so confident that they will win the war?”
“They believe that their government and the Delphineans will come up with a solution,” Christine said. “They point to the success on the first day of the war, and then the success they had when the Delphineans introduced the armored vehicle-mounted railguns. They believe there are better weapons coming.”
“You would think that if they had better weapons, they would have already brought them.”
“Yes, if they understood the suffering of the people here, you would expect them to do whatever they could to stop this war.”
February 8th – 2300 CKT
“Cer Sam, you’re needed in the Captain’s office,” ADI said, waking Samantha up. She was in the condo, waiting for Marc to come home.
“What’s going on?” Samantha asked.
“I think the Captain needs you,” ADI said.
“Okay,” Samantha said, somewhat puzzled. It was an odd time for Marc to need her, and it was unusual for ADI to be so vague. She brushed her hair and checked her makeup before leaving the condo. She had to cross the street to get to the office.
“Marc?” Samantha called out as she knocked on his door. She could hear the sound of a television coming from the office. When Marc didn’t answer, she opened the door and entered. Marc was asleep, his head on the desk, a bottle of scotch beside him. The television was playing the news report from earlier in the day. Marc had the report running on a constant loop.
“ADI, can you give me access to Marc’s Comm,” Samantha asked.
“Sorry, Cer Sam, but I cannot. However, I can tell you what he has been researching,” ADI said.
“That will be fine.”
“He has been researching the history of the area around the Black Sea and the Azov Sea that comprises Ukraine and the neighboring area of Russia,” ADI said. “Specifically, he has been looking into separatist movements within Russia that are concentrated in that area.”
“I see,” Samantha said. “What else has he been doing?”
“He has been obsessively reviewing the casualty reports from the war,” ADI said. “He has also spent a lot of time researching a new projectile for a railgun.”
“How long has he been asleep?”
“He passed out ten minutes before I called you,” ADI said.
“Thanks for calling me, ADI. This is unusual behavior for Marc.”
“That is why I called you,” ADI said.
February 10th – 0800 EET
“Status update?” Marc asked.
“Despite all our successes with the Ukrainians, the Russians are continuing to advance. They’re now two hundred kilometers from Kyiv. They seem to have figured out we were taking the tanks from the convoys, because they’re now breaking the convoys into smaller units, only sending eight tanks per convoy,” Kal said.
“Can’t we just make more raids?” Catie asked.
“We are, but they are still getting more tanks through to their forces, and we’re capturing fewer tanks for the Ukrainians. They’ve also changed their tactics, adapting to the railguns by putting sacrificial vehicles in front of the tanks.”
“They’re paying dearly for their advance,” General McFarland said, “but they keep throwing more men and machines at the front.”
“Fred, is my Oryx ready?” Marc asked.
“Yes, sir,” Fred said. “You know that thing can only fire one full shot every four hours.”
“I know,” Marc said. “Here’s a list of targets,” Marc flicked the list to Fred and brought it up on the display. “I want you to start at the top, hit it with a ten-kilo shell, drop a warning beacon saying we’ll destroy the facility in two hours and that they need to evacuate, then two hours later hit it with a one-hundred-kilo shell.”
“How is a one-hundred-kilo bomb going to destroy a military facility?” the general asked.
“It’s going to be traveling at over twenty kilometers per second when it hits,” Fred said.
“Didn’t you hear about Marc’s little demonstration on Iwaki Island,” Samantha said. “That was about two hundred kilos.”
“Oh my god, you can’t be serious,” the general said. “That thing caused an earthquake.”
“We’ve modified the design since,” Marc said. “Now it will break apart at two thousand meters. That will spread the force over a larger area, reducing the chance of an earthquake, but doing a better job of leveling the facility.”
“Have you thought about the consequences?” the general asked. “Isn’t what you’re proposing a violation of the outer space treaty?”
“No,” Marc said. “The bomb we’re dropping is not a weapon of mass destruction; it’s not nuclear, chemical, or biological. We are dropping it from high altitude, but that’s no different than an ICBM or a short-range ballistic missile; the Oryx will launch from Delphi City and make its launch a
nd return without orbiting the Earth.”
Marc put a map of the area on the display next to the target list, and everyone started checking the locations of the targets. Almost all of them were in Kuban, the region of Russia that bordered the Sea of Azov and Ukraine.
“You do know that there is an underground independence movement for Kuban,” the general said.
“I’m counting on it,” Marc replied.
“Have you thought this through?” the general asked, sounding very distressed.
“We’ve been going over it for two days,” Samantha said, her voice showing how exhausted she was.
February 11th – 1530 EET, 0800 EST
“Ambassador Vlasov, the Delphi ambassador is asking to talk with you,” the aide said, interrupting the ambassador’s breakfast.
“At this time? What is she thinking?” Ambassador Vlasov demanded.
“She says it is critical that she speak with you,” the aide said.
“Show her in.”
Ambassador Hannaford entered the breakfast room, following the aide. “Ambassador Vlasov, I’m sorry to disturb your breakfast.”
“No matter, why do you need to see me? Are you ready to seek terms in Ukraine?”
“No, we see no reason to be asking for terms, unless of course, your country has decided to end its illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
“Bah, Ukraine was historically Russian, Gorbachev was an idiot to let it go! Why are you here?”
“I’m here to inform you that in five minutes, Delphi will drop a small bomb on Primorsko-Akhtarsk airbase. …”
“How dare you,” the ambassador sputtered.
“We want to get your attention. Exactly two hours after the first bomb is dropped, we will obliterate the base. We suggest that you evacuate it before then,” Ambassador Hannaford said.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I assure you we do dare. And until you withdraw from all of Ukraine, we will be dropping bombs on the various military installations in the area. We will follow the same pattern, a small warning bomb two hours before we obliterate the base. If you wish, I’ll send a courtesy notice to you before each one,” Ambassador Hannaford said in a calm, steady voice.
