by Will Crudge
The sky appeared to be in a permanent state of sunset due to the unique rotation of the moon in relation to its orbit. But amid the low light, the high levels of geothermal heat coming from the highly geologically active moon kept the ambient temperature at a tolerable 18 degrees Celsius.
“It’s a good thing the Crimson decided to forage for food during this season of the moon’s year!” Thomas said with an authentic tone. His FIST (Fire Support Team) leader, Corporal Gail just nodded in agreement. Her UAHC armor was vastly different from standard infantry types, and the less aggressive powered gauntlet allowed for more delicate manipulations. This was by design since the tiny laser designator was designed to be compact and difficult for an enemy to pinpoint, so the tiny power connections and adjustment dials had to be small.
Private Todd was manning the portable coms relay unit that allowed for the relatively short ranges of the suits’ coms range to be dramatically extended. It also was able to bring in tactical overlays and an assortment of direct and indirect fire ballistics data to link with their designator. This allowed for a layered level of data cross checking for precision fire support applications.
It was the FIST team’s job to call in the artillery, mortars, orbital strikes, and direct fighters to their ground targets. They were damn good at it too.
Todd was monitoring the feeds when he saw the Fleet-wide announcement banner appear on the compact display.
[Crimson Forces have agreed to a cease fire to commence NLT 1500 Zulu! Cease all offensive operations and stand down accordingly. Be advised; Inherent right-to-self-defense rules of engagement will remain in effect until further notice.]
Todd just swore under his breath before he relayed the message to the other team members.
“Fuck!” PFC Lisa spouted. “We almost became the first UAHC Soldiers to call in a conventional field artillery strike under combat conditions in over two hundred years! Then this shit happens!” Lisa’s words triggered solemn nods of agreement to each member of the team. She didn’t bother to look at their reactions, as she was busy scanning for threats on their team leader’s left flank.
“Look alive, Murder FIST!” The Gail sounded off. “We still have over three minutes to go, and that Crimson platoon is still in a movement-to-contact formation! We are within twenty seconds of a Time-On-Target fire mission, and the time of flight is under two minutes.”
“Cutting it close, but I’ll it!” Thomas smiled, then spit over his shoulder. Gail couldn’t tell if he spit some on his own armor or not. The base coating of all UAHC powered armor was a standard matte silver, but their armor had been auto-sprayed with layered patterns of charcoal grey, beige, and streaks of light brown. It was standard pre-combat-prep for Soldiers to get their armor coated in a pattern best suited for the specific environment they expected to operate in.
“Enemy platoon’s still moving steady.” Gail said as she peered down the scope of the small laser designator. This fire mission had been preplanned, so the designator was less of a target location method, and more of an enhanced optic that could calculate the estimated speed of moving targets. “Send fire command on my mark!”
“Prepared to send fire command!” Todd replied.
“Three… Two… Mark!” Gail shouted as she dropped her outstretched palm down as a hand-and-arm signal to augment her verbal command.
“Fire command sent… I confirm FDC receipt!” Todd replied. The entire team was well trained in all things fire support. This was one of the few roles that a standard UAHC Soldier doesn’t get much training on - even during their fifteen years of intense training.
The elite FIST teams are the best of the best… of the best.
To be selected for Fire Support School is a huge honor. But in reality, the UAHC doesn’t award the title of Soldier to anyone who hasn’t proved to be a top-tier bad-ass.
Unfortunately for many former Fisters, they tend to be less successful in their careers than standard infantry. The UAHC frowns upon elitism, and promotes a mutual admiration for every Soldier. Just to earn the title of Soldier is statistically in line with winning a jackpot lottery… but with a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears. FIST teams seem to breed their own sense of superiority even though there are measures in place to prevent it. However, the selection criteria of the Fister candidates is part of the problem.
Candidates with a more instinctive sense of space, timing, and just sheer gut instinct, tend to be prone to heightened senses of confidence and cockiness. It’s both an honor and a curse to be selected for Fire Support School. Despite their elite status, only a few of them manage to make it past Staff Sergeant.
Soon a new message came down through the coms relay. Todd glanced down as he began to shout incoherently. He forwarded it along for the other team members to see. “We’ve got an MTO people!” The others knew what it meant… ‘Message To Observer’. It was a message sent to the team on the ground when a fire mission has been approved. It includes all the pertinent data that the Fisters need to know in order to observe the effects of the mission effectively, and thereby make adjustments if required.
[MTO: FIRE FOR EFFECT; BATTERY 2; HE QUICK; TOT 1459:23]
The message to observer was straight to the point. Since this was a pre-planned mission, and not a target of opportunity, there was no need in firing a single round for the FIST to spot and call in an adjustment before the rest of the battery transitioned into the Fire for Effect phase. Fire for Effect was the point in any fire mission where the desired effect on the enemy was brought to bear. In this case, Battery 2 denoted that every gun in the six gun battery will fire two volleys. HE Quick, is the shell-fuse combination, and denoted high explosive rounds with quick point-detonating fuses. TOT (Time On Target) was the estimated time of impact by the time the shots were fired as they travelled through the moons atmosphere in a low angle arc.
[SHOT]
“We’ve got shot!” Todd sounded off! “Rounds are in the air!”
“I know what the fuck it means, Private!” Gail scolded as she kept her eyes of the designator scope. Todd decided to shut his mouth. Gail knew he would dare to escalate her wrath upon him.
[SPLASH]
“We’ve got splash!” Todd sounded off as the rest of the team remained silent. Pockets of Crimson forces had become isolated within UAHC controlled space since the Battle of Tangine. The enemy platoon was likely just a foraging team. Intel suggested that they were dropped on moon in order to raid for food and weapons. The small moon was a well-known staging area for emergency relief supplies and raw materials.
The Crimson ground forces would never attempt a terrestrial operation in a sector with known UAHC Infantry units unless they were desperate. Standard Crimson infantry were no match for UAHC troops in an open battlefield.
Engaging enemy ground troops with indirect fire assets, such as field artillery, was an ideal option to prevent friendly casualties.
The view from the designator was all-encompassing. Gail could almost see the whites of the enemy’s eyes. Or at least she thought she could have. Their full-faced helmets concealed their facial features. The terrain forced the enemy to merge into a linear formation. The small ravine would only have enough space for a single file formation. Risky, but necessary.
The platoon was converging into a single file, while two squads formed a tight defensive perimeter while facing outward. A perfect spread of metal and meat for the barrage about to hit them.
And hit it did…
The rounds detonated in a perfectly timed sequence. Each round landed in pattern to allow an overlap of concussive force and shrapnel to fully envelop the doomed platoon. A moment later the pattern was repeated by the second volley.
There was barely any wind at the time of the strike, so Gail had to filter her optics and scan for heat signatures. But there were none.
“What the hell?!” Gail shouted. “There’s nothing!”
“Killed ‘em that good, huh?” Thomas replied as he attempted to spit once more… and
failed.
“No… I mean nothing… at all!” No heat… at least heat that would indicate freshly shredded human meat… or even the ambient atmospherics from powered armor…. There’s none of that!” Gail was interrupted by an audible alarm from the coms relay unit behind her.
“Fifteen hundred, folks!” Todd announced. “No more Pew! Pew!” for us!”
“At ease, Private!” Corporal Gail sounded off. “Something’s not right!”
“Corporal?” Todd said. “FDC wants and end of mission report, or an adjustment.”
“Tell them the effects can’t be observed. There’s no wind to dissipate the clouds of smoke… and thermals are acting up.”
“Yes, Corporal!”
Gail continued to scan for any signs of something that made sense after bodies were torn to shreds, but she couldn’t see a thing. She cycled through every optical filter she could think of. No change.
Until…
Gail noticed the outside of the smoke was partially illuminated. She fine-tuned the filter she was on until she could match the spectrums. As she did, a feeling of deep concern poured over her. She traced the points of light back to three sources coming from different angles. Shit!
“Holographic decoys with energy signature generation tech!” Gail shouted. “Call it in, now!” But plasma hit her helmet with a glancing blow as soon as she spat the words. She was knocked to the bottom of the roughly-hewn hole that they had dug when they emplaced.
Her ears were ringing as the audio systems in her helmet attempted to re-attenuate themselves while her HUD went into a reboot cycle. She was deaf and blind for several moments, until her senses finally snapped back into reality. The sounds of curses and weapons fire flooded her field of awareness. There was a sudden overload of stimuli, but she shook it off.
When she regained her senses, she could see Lance Corporal Thomas feverishly firing towards their right flank. She darted her eyes around to see PFC Lisa firing on the left while Private Todd was hastily relaying audio updates into the coms relay. Todd was multitasking. He was also covering there six o’clock with blindly aimed shots from his plasma pistol as he worked the coms.
Gail quickly grabbed the designator, which was already set to scan their twelve o’clock.
Nothing! Fuck, this was a deception… the cease fire… the holographic platoon! The question came into her mind about where the Crimson forces had gotten their tech to pull it off. She knew UAHC scanners were difficult to fool, so figured the enemy had seized the tech from some kind of UAHC or Unum facility. But she had more important concerns at present.
“Status?” Gail asked through the team’s audio channel.
“Full platoon… Left flank… Armor Green… Ammo Yellow!” Thomas answered up first. Green meant his armor was functioning at better than ninety percent efficiency, and yellow meant his ammunition dropped below ninety percent, but was still above fifty.
“Two – Possibly three infantry squads… Right Flank… Armor Green… Ammo Yellow!” Lisa replied in turn.
“Platoon plus... Six o’clock… Armor Green… Ammo Green!” Todd answered lastly. Gail knew that he was splitting his time on the coms while using his side arm, so he still had a full load of heavy rifle ammo and plasma charge.
Gail scanned the twelve o’clock position again, and was glad she did… An entire squad of troops emerged from behind the warehouse in the distance, and were steadily spreading out into skirmish lines. She realized they were preparing a direct assault on the team’s position. It was a standard infantry tactic, she realized. Overwhelm an enemy position from the flanks, and then send an assault team through.
“Reinforcements?” Gail shouted at Todd as she held her rifle steady towards the twelve o’clock position.
“Negative!” Todd replied. “Fuckers dropped a whole division on top of our battalion! We’ve been cut off!”
“What about the battery at the firing point?”
“Still there, but not for much longer! Spec ops commandos came in within five clicks of them, and dropped at least company of bright-red-fuckers!”
She weighed her options. They were few. The team was completely surrounded. She realized the twelve o’clock position only had a small assault team. She knew there was only one option… The path of least resistance.
“Pack up!” She ordered. “You three will blast through the assault team to our twelve and make it to the other side of that warehouse! You all can cut around to the ridge beyond and take the high ground until reinforcements come to bail you out!”
“What about you, Corporal?” Lisa asked nervously. Gail wondered what Lisa’s facial expression looked like behind her visor.
“I’m going to make sure as many motherfuckers die as I can! Understood?” Gail replied with an assertive tone.
There was a slight delay in their responses. Gail knew they were being reluctant to leave her. But to her relief, the acknowledgement icons began to ping her HUD a moment later.
She reached up and secured the coms relay from Todd and began to request for a Danger Close Fire Mission. The artillery’s effective radius would include her own position so she declared ‘Danger Close’. That would prompt the Fire Direction Center to override safety protocols and process the mission… regardless of the friendlies in the blast zone.
[MTO: DANGER CLOSE; EXPENDING ALL ORDINANCE]
Gail’s eyes got wide. She’d never seen an MTO formatted so crudely, but then she realized that the details didn’t matter when it was a final stand.
[SHOT]
She saw the message populate. All hell would be coming down on them so she had to get her team clear.
“Red on ammo!” Thomas shouted. Gail wasn’t surprised. She knew he would be at his current rate of fire. She pulled out all spare magazines and charge canisters she was carrying. She figured she would be dead before she could reload her own weapon anyway.
“Here!” She tossed the ammo to Thomas as she gave slow nod. She suspected they both knew it would be the last time they’d ever see each other. “Now go!”
The team didn’t hesitate as they poured over the earthen cover of their position. She barely saw them open fire on the unsuspecting assault team as she saw another message come through.
[SPLASH]
Just have to pin them back a few seconds more! Gail told herself as she hurled four grenades in rapid succession. One each at her six, nine, and three o’clock directions. Then she sprayed suppressive fire over the edge of the man-made depression they’d dug out. She had no idea if she would hit anything while shooting blind, but that wasn’t her goal.
She only needed to slow the enemy down, and make them drop for cover. But they would never get the chance.
By the time she felt her stomach churn from the initial shockwave, she would know no more.
New Look, Same old Hammer
Location: UAHC Sloop, Foehammer, Titan orbital Shipyard
Date Time: Post Interstellar 10/01/4201 0845HRS UAHC Standard Zulu
System: Sol, Mid Region
Fleet Marshal Darius stepped onto the gangway of the newly refitted Sloop, known as the Foehammer. Fleet Admiral Zeff accompanied Darius as he walked to the left side of his senior. An old tradition that was seldom observed… and largely forgotten. Whenever military personnel accompany someone with a higher rank, they were supposed to position themselves to give the senior the place of honor. The right side. Darius knew that Zeff was a stickler for tradition, despite the man’s rough-around-the-edges disposition.
Darius couldn’t think of a better companion to accompany him on his first look at the refitted Sloop. The vessel – and its crew – were now famous for its heroism at Tangine.
Darius remembered how Zeff’s passion for spacecraft engineering had impacted his own life. It was Zeff that had made accommodations for Darius to keep the Doom-Raptor aboard ship decades earlier. That single gesture of compassion resonated with Darius for decades.
Kara met the two senior officers at the top of the g
angway as she rendered a proper salute. Zeff allowed Darius the honor of returning it, since he was the senior officer present. Kara dropped her salute crisply as she stood at ease… but with her shoulders firmly up and back in the proper posture of a military professional. Darius was grateful for it. Even though Zeff worked under him now, he always considered Zeff to be his superior.
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this thing without combat damage!” Darius chuckled. The first time I saw it, it was trading blows with destroyers three times its size!”
Zeff just smiled as he shook his head. “I don’t know how a support ship ever survived all that… But I hear rumor that it had an amazing and – unconventional – crew to pull it off!’
“Yes, Sir!” Kara replied. “Would you gentleman follow me?” Kara gestured for the two senior officers to enter the main entrance which was at the base of the superstructure that adorned the U-Boat-shaped warship.
The two senior officers nodded with a smile and followed suit.
They entered the main corridor of the ship. The smell of fresh paint and hardware filled Darius’ senses. The ship was clean and looked brand new. He had never been on a sloop before, so he had no frame of reference as to how one should look. The only thing he did know, was that the smaller support ships were designed to be more utilitarian as they lacked the ornate spit-and-polish luster that the larger capital ships were decked out with.
“Gentlemen, I’d like to take you towards the aft-sections first, and then work our way forward to the CIC. After that, fore compartments.” Kara said with every bit of professionalism she could muster. Darius could tell she was out of her comfort zone, but Zeff must have noticed it first.
