Metal Legion Boxed Set 1

by C H Gideon

  “Affirmative, Captain,” Podsy agreed darkly. “And I’m guessing they’re not the only bits of equipment the rebels have that we’ll trace back to Sol.”

  “Lock this information down immediately and go directly to the general,” Xi ordered; technically she was permitted to issue direct orders to Podsy. His capacity aboard the Bonhoeffer was more of a liaison between Dragon Brigade and the ship than an official crewman, which meant that he fell into a decidedly gray area in terms of where his link went in the chain of command.

  “Yes, Captain,” he replied, and something in his voice told Xi that he would need to be brought into the loop on the Jemmin conspiracy sooner rather than later. That particular call was above her pay grade, though. Either the general or Colonel Jenkins would need to decide whether or not Podsy could be included. For now, all she could do was send him directly to the brass and let them decide.

  After the line went dead, she raised Styles via a P2P relay established at Trapper’s base camp on the Gash’s southern slope. It took over half a minute before the Chief Warrant Officer finally replied, “Styles here, Captain.”

  “Lock this line down,” she urged, closing the hatch behind her to keep Gordon from hearing the upcoming conversation.

  “Stand by,” Styles acknowledged, and a few seconds later his image appeared on her screen as he took a seat inside an APC’s cab. “All right, Captain, this is as secure as I can make it down here.”

  “I’m forwarding a data packet for you to review,” she explained, squirting the data to him. “Reply once you see the link.”

  Unsurprisingly, it took Styles less time than Xi to recognize the meaning of the data, but his eyes went as wide as hers had when he did. “Is this accurate?”

  “Podsy cross-checked every available telemetry feed on their flight paths,” she said grimly. “It’s accurate.”

  The chief leaned back in the APC’s co-pilot chair and contemplatively rubbed his forehead. “This complicates things…maybe a lot.”

  “I agree.” She nodded, wondering if she would have touched off the mega-nuke had she known the Solarians were somehow involved with the rebels on the Brick.

  Much to her satisfaction, that particular doubt was short-lived and cast aside as soon as it arose.

  “Ok, we’re going to need to call down fresh supplies,” Styles explained. “Solarian missile tech is decades ahead of ours, which means anti-Jemmin systems are the first order of business. And ever since Chairman Xing’s ‘One Star’ speech back in the mid-twenty-first, Sol’s government has had a nasty history of deploying bioweapons when things don’t go their way. We’ll need antivirals, quarantine gear, disinfection booths…”

  Xi shuddered as he rattled off the list of supplies. She recalled shocking stories of Sol’s government deploying targeted hemorrhagic viruses against its own citizens during some of the more contentious rebellions that came while the wormholes were down. The entire Europa colony had been wiped out by such an attack, and half of Mars’ population of eight million had died from a similar “outbreak” that could have never occurred without the government’s complicity or outright sponsorship.

  “…and above all, we’re going to have to lock down our people even tighter than we did back on Shiva’s Wrath,” Styles finished, his fear-filled voice hardening with each word until he was once again speaking like a calm, seasoned professional rather than an understandably terrified person contemplating death by hemorrhagic fever.

  “No breathable atmosphere on the Brick,” Xi quipped, “which means it shouldn’t be too hard to keep the doors shut. Forward the new requisitions and I’ll send them up to Chief Rimmer ASAP.”

  Styles nodded. “I’ll have the rough outline in five minutes, and detailed forms in twenty.”

  “Good work, Chief,” Xi acknowledged. “Sometimes it sucks to be the only ones who know things.”

  9

  Eviction Notice

  After a meeting with the general which boiled down to orders along the lines of “Try to keep a lid on the Solarian angle as long as possible, kid,” Podsy was hard at work packing the latest round of requisitions into the cans. As the crews went about their work, there was an air of tension throughout the compartment. The drop-deck was generally the last group on the Bonhoeffer to receive intel updates, but after receiving the latest revisions to their drop schedule, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the possible reasons for the latest changes.

  Cans One, Two and Three had all been packed with medical supplies generally reserved for combating the worst kinds of viruses ever encountered in human history. Topped off by magazines packed with the most effective (and expensive) anti-missile rockets in the Terran arsenal, it wasn’t hard to figure out that things on the Brick were more dire than anyone had anticipated.

  Scuttlebutt was running rampant, and the deck crews had correctly concluded that someone other than surprisingly well-armed border-jumpers was down there on that planet. There were only two nations which made these latest requisitions make sense: the Jemmin or, more chillingly, the Solarians.

  Of course, Podsy had known all along, but it was still fascinating to see his fellow servicemen go through the process of discussing the reason for these order revisions. The older members of the Bonhoeffer’s crew were decidedly less interested in working through the situation than the younger crew, but the same measure of grim determination filled the visages of every man and woman present.

  As Podsy loaded a case of rockets with his forklift, his comm link went off.

  “Podsednik here,” he acknowledged.

  “I need you in Control ASAP, Lieutenant,” came Chief Rimmer’s reply.

  “Be there in twenty seconds,” he remarked, pushing the case to its slot in the narrow support can before pulling back and letting the grease-monkeys secure the ordnance for shipment. He turned the forklift and sped off to the deck’s control room, where Chief Rimmer sat alone before a workstation.

  Podsy jumped down on his new awkward legs. His old legs had been amputated midway up the thigh by Doc Fellows, and during rehab, Podsy had been given a choice between conserving as much of his original tissue as possible or performing the most expeditious (and, in his mind, the most effective) replacement procedure.

  He had opted to remove most of the rest of his soft tissue below the pelvis while also replacing his pelvic bones with an alloy frame. He had initially thought this would be a far more difficult procedure than simply grafting a prosthetic onto what was left of his body, but the truth was simple: Terran orthopedic surgeons were far better and more experienced at replacing entire limbs than they were at custom-fitting prosthetics to stumps of mostly-useless flesh and bone like his thighs had been. The reason for this was simple: vat-growing limbs and grafting them onto the existing tissue was the preferred method for extremity repair.

  The problem with that approach was that it would take a year to complete, during which time he would hobble around on mostly-useless legs and be a burden to everyone around him, so the choice to have most of his lower half replaced prosthetically had been a lot easier than he would have imagined. He had also put in for a full vat-grown replacement set of legs and pelvis. Though many of his fellow crew liked to rib him about whether or not his more sensitive parts were still all-original and fully functional, he thought that was getting too much into his business.

  Podsy didn’t have a problem, and that was probably the greatest relief of all, more so than losing his legs. He marveled at how shallow that seemed but accepted it as the male paradigm that no amount of evolution would change.

  Looking down at his heavy metal legs, Podsy was comfortable that he had made the right call. They were still clunky and poorly-coordinated due to a combination of his inexperience at using them and, perhaps more importantly, because they were still dialed way down so that he didn’t hurt anyone with their potentially outrageous power and speed.

  “Lieutenant,” acknowledged a passing corporal, who saluted with an all-metal right arm emb
lazoned with the Terran Armor Corps’ heraldry. There was a certain fraternity between amputees, which Podsy found both comforting and distressing. Some of them seemed to center their identities on their injuries, which seemed like a pretty poor system of self-valuation. But others validated the legendary camaraderie which existed only between those wounded in the line of duty. It was one thing to take fire, another to take a hit, and still another to lose a part of yourself in combat. It was like a marksman award for the enemy.

  And it took an exceptional person to not only refuse to slow down but also to pick up speed in the face of such opposition. Podsy was comforted to know that even if he was not made of such stern stuff, he was surrounded by people who made him aspire to be like them.

  “Corporal.” Podsy acknowledged the salute with a brief but meaningful look before making his way into Chief Rimmer’s office. “What have we got, Chief?”

  “Close the hatch,” Rimmer said, and Podsy complied before making his way to the workstation. Once there, he saw an image of four seemingly frail and decidedly avian-looking warships. With the wormhole gate visible off their sterns, the quartet of warships looked every bit like predators who had just found a meal.

  “The Finjou?” Podsy asked, although it wasn’t a question. He had reviewed the files on the Brick’s true owners and familiarized himself with their ship designs and capabilities.

  “They came through the gate two hours ago.” Rimmer nodded grimly. “Most of their arsenal centers on air superiority, so we have to assume they’re going to antagonize the Bonhoeffer to push us off overwatch.”

  “What’s the general’s disposition?” Podsy asked, his mind already working through the myriad supplies the Brick-bound battalion would need if the Bonhoeffer was displaced.

  “He’s asking for your input, actually,” Rimmer said, causing Podsy’s eyebrows to rise in alarm. “He wanted you brought up to speed before you go up there, so consider yourself up to speed and get a move on.”

  Why would General Akinouye want my input? he wondered, the gears of his mind spinning out of control.

  “Thank you, Chief,” Podsy acknowledged after failing to answer his own unspoken question. He made his way to the drop-deck’s interior blast doors and keyed in his access codes. During active deployment, the exterior sections of the Bonhoeffer were isolated from the ship’s primary hull, known to the crew as the “keel.”

  The reason for this isolation was simple physics. During battle, a warship like the Bonhoeffer could receive fire so powerful that it could sheer through a meter of the best armor used by the TAF. And while the venerable warship was built to withstand the physical shock-loads of those impacts, its human crew was considerably less hardy.

  As a result, every section of the Bonhoeffer “floated” on independent shock-absorption systems, some of which Podsy passed by as he made his way through the ship’s spine. Gears, hydraulic cylinders, mimetic gel-based damper pads, and even graphene sheets tensioned by high-powered magnets worked together to dampen the shock of kinetic impacts on the hull. But all of the ship’s various outer sections were anchored to the keel, which made protecting it of paramount importance.

  A hit to an outer section might overcome the shock-load systems, killing everyone in that area by throwing them with spine-breaking force, but a hit to the keel could do the same to everyone aboard the warship, no matter where they were stationed.

  As a result, a condition-one call sent nearly every Terran aboard the Bonhoeffer to their crash-couches, where they would not only have protection from impacts, but they would also be provided several days’ supply of air and water. During the deployment at Shiva’s Wrath, the Bonhoeffer’s drop-deck crews had been out of their couches in order to secure partially-prepped ordnance while the ship took fire.

  Podsy disliked the idea of jumping into a crash-couch and riding a battle out, but he suspected he would soon be faced with that prospect if the Finjou decided to push the matter.

  He finally arrived at the CAC and keyed in his credentials, causing the trio of heavy blast doors to slide open one after another and permit him entry to the ship’s nerve center.

  Filled with three dozen expert technicians, their workstations were arranged in three levels around a bowl-shaped theater which featured a raised dais at the center. The imposing but purely functional captain’s chair was situated there, occupied by Colonel Li as he conducted the ship’s departments with the professionalism one would hope to see in a Terran warship commander.

  General Akinouye had the privilege of occupying a similar chair built into the starboard edge of the bowl-shaped chamber, and he waved Podsy over with a faint flick of two fingers. The lieutenant skirted the upper rim of the CAC’s theater and made his way to the general’s simple but robust station. He offered a salute, which the general acknowledged before gesturing for him to stand at ease.

  “Lieutenant Podsednik,” Akinouye greeted him, and Podsy was reminded of his meeting just a few hours earlier when the general had summoned him to the same precise spot. “Colonel Li, if you have a moment,” Akinouye called.

  “Of course, General.” Li nodded, moving down the short set of stairs which separated him from the rest of the theater. He then ascended a set of stairs that brought him to stand before the general.

  “The Finjou are here, and I want options,” Akinouye said, driving straight to the heart of the matter. “Colonel Li, your thoughts?”

  Li shook his head firmly, seeming to ignore Podsy as he spoke. “Four Red Talon-class corvettes present a credible threat to the Bonhoeffer, General, but in a wide-open engagement, we’d mop the floor with them.”

  “I’m aware of our respective tactical ratings, Colonel,” Akinouye said neutrally. “What are your recommendations?”

  “The way I see it, we have two choices, General,” Li replied. “We either move to intercept the Finjou and force an engagement that slows their approach, buying our people on the surface time to complete their mission. Or we permit the Finjou to make orbit and contend with them once they’re here.”

  “I don’t want to start a shooting war with the Finjou, Colonel,” the general said with mild displeasure. “And by even the most charitable interpretation of the facts, we’re their guests.”

  “Then we stand off,” Li said matter-of-factly. “We’ll be cutting off support to Dragon Brigade, but there’s no way we can outmaneuver four ships intent on driving us off geo-synch without firing on them…or ramming them, I suppose. We can use that time to open a dialogue, but the odds of success on that front are questionable.”

  Akinouye nodded contemplatively. “Either way, Dragon Brigade is stranded unless or until the Finjou have been addressed, and the Finjou will make station in six hours.”

  Podsy took an unconscious step forward as the reason for his summons became apparent. “General, Colonel, if I may?”

  Akinouye’s gaze quickly pivoted to Podsy, and the colonel’s grudgingly followed suit. “What is it, Lieutenant?” Akinouye asked pointedly.

  “We’re loading fourteen fresh drop-cans on Two Deck right now,” Podsy explained. “If we keep them working on their current orders and transfer all available personnel over to Two Deck, we could load twenty-two more cans from there and drop them before the Finjou arrive. It’s not ideal, but it addresses the supply issue. The entirety of our effort is to buy time for our people on the planet. Once the Finjou arrive, they are going to make things tough up here and down there. Better that we are each able to support ourselves independent of the other, and it gives the Bonhoeffer the room it needs to maneuver and avoid, or at least delay, a conflict with the Finjou.”

  “One Deck is already engaged loading those cans,” Akinouye observed. “And the supplies being loaded into those cans are vital to the integrity of our ground-based forces. I don’t want to pull anyone off that effort.”

  “First and Third Shifts can deal with One Deck if we transfer fifteen people from Engineering or Gunnery,” Podsy explained. “Give Second Shif
t another thirty able hands and I’ll pack Two Deck’s cans with all the ordnance our people would need to secure their position against a continental-scale air-based invasion force.”

  The general nodded in thought before turning back to Colonel Li. “What do you think, Colonel?”

  “I think half the cans on Two Deck are either down-checked or in the repair queue with urgent flags,” Li replied with a grunt. “Any ordnance we sent down in those would get no better than a coin flip at surviving the drop.”

  “We spread out the drop-zone, Colonel,” Podsy suggested. “Put half a klick between each can so that if one goes off on impact, it doesn’t take the others out. And we load the highest-value ordnance into the cans we’re most confident of.”

  “That breaks protocol in about nine ways, Lieutenant,” Li retorted. “And it’s a waste of perfectly good ordnance. Each of those cans is packed with assets with an economic value totaling the combined life’s effort of between fifty and two hundred Terran citizens. You’re talking about potentially blowing thousands of Terran lives by playing fast and loose with the rules. Considered preparation and precise execution are how you win battles.”

  “We’ve got 463 people down there, Colonel Li,” Podsy replied unyieldingly. “And I know for a fact that each of them would gladly go work in a factory somewhere to pay off the debt incurred by a little wasted ordnance if it meant an improved chance to complete the mission and leave the Brick behind.”

  Li squared his shoulders to Podsednik and fixed him with a burning gaze. “You took a little fire on Durgan’s Folly, narrowly avoided a court-martial after violating my ship’s data core’s integrity, and now you think you can lecture me on logistics? Are you some sort of unheralded expert on tactical analysis, Lieutenant?”

  “No, sir.” Podsy shook his head, letting the colonel win the short-lived contest of wills by briefly lowering his eyes to the deck. “But I was called up here to offer my input, and this is what I’ve got.” He turned to General Akinouye, who had silently observed the exchange with a measure of bemused interest only now apparent to Podsednik. “We can do this, General. We can get those supplies planet-side before the Finjou arrive, and it will buy us the time we need to reach our objective without actively antagonizing the Finjou. To demonstrate our sincerity, we pull the Bonhoeffer off station-keeping as soon as we’ve delivered our cans, but we maintain a covering position which ensures we can effectively engage the Finjou if they become hostile to our people.”