by Peter Smith
Williams grabbed his son by the shoulder and pulled him close, “He was my son before he was your hubby, won’t let nothing happen to my boy.”
Her lips formed into a wry smile, “Then you should know that he makes bad choices.”
Her father-in-law shook her husband, “I know, but he has other redeeming qualities.”
Tobor’s notification popped up in her vision again and Sean broke free, his hands touching his chest, “I’m right here.” Maria and David shared a laugh as Sean shook his head, “Can we get going now, life and death situation and all.” He said.
Maria stood up, walked around the table and kissed Sean on the lips. She felt his hand fall to the small of her back just as she pulled away, “You come back to us no matter what.”
He nodded, at a loss for words. He leaned in, kissed her again and then spun to leave. She knew this was hard for him, that he didn’t want to leave his wife and child, but he had spent most of his life growing up among the Marines that were risking their lives. He couldn’t let them go into a war on their own.
David smiled at her, “I’ll keep him safe.”
“You better.”
They walked through the door and out into the hallway. She spun and her mother a message, “The boys are heading to the hangar, if you hurry you can catch David before they leave.”
Then she pushed her thoughts of family to the side and focused on the task before her. She opened the connection request from Tobor, “What’s going on Toby?”
“The observation platforms tasked with monitoring Berlin for General Kellen’s presence have detected a mass of units leaving the vicinity of the city.”
“Destination?” She asked.
“I am re-tasking the satellites to provide a greater field of view, standby.”
She sat there, tapping the tabletop in a rolling motion with her fingertips. She was just about to ask Toby for a status update when it spoke to her again, “Leading elements appear to be en route to the town of Frankfurt an der Odor and Maria, there is a large force moving through the Poland region to that same point.”
She closed her eyes and swore silently, “How strong?”
“Initial estimates are that the Trotsky Alliance forces number at nearly forty thousand, with accompanying fire support units and over ten thousand armored vehicles.”
“Crap” She hissed. The Marines and their allies were good, but Trotsky was throwing everything he had at this engagement. She wasn’t even sure where he could have gotten that many tanks from. This was a lot more than she thought the Marines capable of overcoming. She checked the estimates of the Marine and allied forces. They were outnumbered by nearly four to one. She shook her head, remembering her lessons about twentieth century history and the mass waves of soldiers that the Soviets threw at the much more technologically advanced and experience Wehrmacht soldiers. She hoped that this engagement wouldn’t end the same way for her nominal allies, as it had for the Germans of the early 1940s.
“Toby, how long until our forces can intervene?”
“Lead air elements are mobilizing, however we cannot position forces of any significance into the region for eight hours, Army strength force deployment can begin within 12 hours.”
“How long until the fighting starts?”
Toby was silent.
“Toby, how long.”
“The Trotsky alliance has already begun using long range artillery against forward deployed units in Frankfurt an der Odor.” She closed her eyes. The scale of this battle would mean that there would be no way back from it. One side or both would lose so much in the fighting that they wouldn’t entertain peace talks. At least until they had beaten each other into a bloody pulp for months and by then far too many innocents would have died in the crossfire.
“Move them faster, Toby.”
“They cannot violate the laws of physics.” Was it’s reply.
She closed her eyes. People would die and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She activated her text message window and could see Sean’s address in her vision. She nearly crafted a message for him, cautioning him to be careful. But she stopped herself before she started it. She knew she couldn’t stop him from joining into the fray, and she also understood that he needed to focus on preparing for battle right now. If she wanted her husband back in one piece, he needed to have his mind on what was to come.
She closed the window and stared out over the forest below. After a minute of feeling helpless, she activated the map of the battle space that her satellites were observing and placed it upon the panoramic window before her. If she couldn’t control the situation, then she would be certain she had enough information to act once the opportunity to do so had arrived.
14
Sean Williams
Twenty-Five Kilometers East of Berlin Spire
The Marine transport dropped it’s loading ramp. The roar of the wind consumed the inside of the bay. His father turned and gave him a thumbs up. Sean knew that the man’s visor was hiding a grin of excitement. Dad had always loved flying. His father turned and ran toward the opening, leaping into the void beyond.
Sean pulled up the photo of Alex and Maria from three months ago. He had captured them playing on the couch, their laughs infectious, Maria’s expression full of love. It was a memory he wanted at the front of his mind.
He took a deep breath and dismissed the photo. He hated this part. He ran forward, his booted feet crashing against the metal decking and then lunged forward, his hands snapping down to his sides and his feet clamping together. One moment the walls of the transport safely ensconced him, the next he was dropping through the black of night. The ground below nothing more than an undefined mass of shapes, illuminated by the consistent flashes of explosions.
His threat warning system sprang to life as hostile radar swept this area of the sky, having detected the transport. He was sure that its flight control system was already putting the aircraft into an insane set of maneuvers to avoid destruction. Sean pushed it’s survival from his mind. Without its fragile organic passengers on board, it could maneuver to the full extent it was capable of. While it’s ability to survive for a few more minutes was integral to his own, he now had to worry about himself.
His armor would adapt its visual profile to match the surrounding environment and it could defeat IR and some radar designed to track ground based equipment. However, the radar systems that were tasked with tracking fast moving aircraft and micro drones had more capable software. Advanced emitters and receivers were often spread over the battle space and networked with the anti-aircraft batteries. It was possible that his suit’s stealth capabilities might not be up to the current task. He just hoped that he wouldn’t find out how effective Trotsky’s AA was.
Strobes of light appeared on the ground below them and bright lances of yellow streaked toward him so fast that his brain barely had the time to process what he was observing into actual thought. His threat warning system blared in his ears and flashed warning messages in his vision. He adjusted his body to curve away from their line of fire and the anti-aircraft shells ripped past him, glowing streaks filling his vision.
More flashes of light, and this time the arc of the anti-aircraft fire from the ground swung away from him. He activated his rear sensor feed and saw their transport aircraft performing a series of complicated maneuvers. The movements creating a G load high enough to kill a person as it attempted to avoid destruction and draw the fire of the ground-based defenses.
His HUD lit up with a yellow marker that showed him the direction to guide himself to get back into the correct flight path. If he wanted to land near his father he’d have to be on it. He moved his hips and arms, using his body to guide the air past him and slid himself onto the right route. Nerves gripped at his bowels as he performed these tasks even after his extensive training on airborne insertion. His father had made sure that once they had left hiding that Sean completed his training in all methods of entry into hostile territory. To say t
hat he had his preference for ways to achieve that goal was an understatement.
His least liked mode of transportation had been flight. He’d never share that with his dad or Maria, but he often felt nearly the same way his mother-in-law Eva did when she flew. Years with his feet on the ground or living beneath it had given him a healthy fear of anything that left it. He enjoyed jumping out of planes even less. But he’d be damned if anyone would ever find out how much these types of maneuvers bothered him.
The HUD informed him that, that with his current armor load and body positioning, he had reached his terminal velocity of two hundred and ninety kilometers an hour. He allowed himself the briefest of moments to marvel at how effective his suit’s sound dampening system could be and how he wasn’t hearing the roar of the wind as he ripped through it. His jaw tightened as the altimeter neared its goal.
The darkened mass of the Earth widened in his field of view. In his peripheral vision a large object blossomed between him and the surface. His father’s chute. He forced a breath through his nose; he needed to relax for this next part.
His head snapped backward, the neck brace of his armor protecting him from a whiplash. His entire orientation was rapidly shifted, as he spun a hundred and eighty degrees in a microsecond. His feet came together, his hands slapped to the sides of his armored thighs. The Restricted AI adjusted his course using the guide wires in his parachute pack and running up to the wing above.
And then it detached him and he was plunging toward a body of water called the Scharmützelsee. Within seconds he hit its surface at over a hundred kilometers an hour. He could feel the energy of the impact pulse through his entire body, jarring his bones. He knew he would be sore tomorrow, likely bruised, but the armor absorbed and distributed most of the kinetic energy and prevented the landing from being debilitating. The rapid insertion method had been necessary to avoid enemy air defenses that could have easily torn them to pieces as they descended.
He kicked his legs, the artificial muscle of the suit and the servos at its joints propelling him toward the surface. His HUD the only thing guiding him in the correct direction as the depths of the lake were as pitch black as the sky above. An explosion and the flash of light generated by the fireball that followed confirmed his suits internal guidance system. He pulled the rifle from its attachment point on his back. The magnetic link kept it in place even after the violent deceleration move with the parachute and the scraping effect of the water sheering across the surface of his enclosed armored suit.
He surfaced seconds later, rifle at the ready as his legs and his left arm kept him above the waterline. His HUD projected another yellow path across the lake. He swam toward the shore, the sound of a heavy machine gun chattering away to the East and tracer fire screeching overhead drew his attention for just a moment as he verified that they weren’t targeting him. The odds were that anyone in the region who saw them splash into the lake would have just assumed they were debris from a destroyed aircraft or an errant artillery shell. He was far more concerned about the possibility that his father might not have survived the insertion.
The Marines and Navy SEALs had nearly perfected the process before ‘The Fall’ but accidents occurred. Armor systems sometimes failed at the most inopportune of times and until he laid eyes on his father, he wouldn’t be completely at ease.
He knew that was foolish, to allow for himself to be distracted. If his dad was aware of the emotional strife he was experiencing he’d threaten to kick Sean’s ass. Sean was a father himself now, and he had more to think about than just his own dad. But he wasn’t entirely sure how he would manage living in a world without his father. They had been together nearly every day since Sean had been rescued by him nearly twenty years ago.
There were some things you couldn’t control, and you either accepted that, or you let yourself dissolve into a puddle of despair and become worthless to everyone. Sean hoped that he was the former, rather than the latter.
He crept up the soft mud of the bank, his booted feet squelching in the soft sand and wet grass. His armor adapted to the changing colors and environment, but he knew that the water running over its surface could distort the images it was projecting, especially if there were fires in the area. It was imperative that he got away from the lake and moving, so he could shake the moisture free with his movement or the increased air flow would help it evaporate.
He crept through the trees that lined the shore. Decades ago much of this would have been trimmed away, but years of neglect had allowed nature to reassert itself. He searched for paths that would produce the least amount of sound as his armor slid through the foliage. His yellow path line consistently adjusted itself to help him keep his bearings and continue toward the rendezvous.
Within minutes he had arrived at the small clearing, not much more than a space where a tree had been ripped from the ground by a summer storm. It had crushed several other low-lying bushes and younger trees in its collapse, opening up the canopy to the stars.
Sean kneeled in the soft soil, weapon pressed to his shoulder, muzzle ready to be aimed at any threat that materialized. A strong gust of wind ripped through the branches above, suddenly and without warning. A dark shape blinked past above, the only reason he was aware of it being that it blocked out the stars for the briefest of moments. A second later the sound of a screaming jet engine followed, and he was buffeted by its close passage to the ground.
When his world didn’t dissolve into fire and pain, he assumed that the low pass wasn’t a bombing run. A weight fell on his shoulder. His muscles tensed in a fraction of a second and he was sending the signals to his core muscles to twist himself around. His arms tensing to spin the muzzle of the rifle up and over his shoulder. A single word was uttered into his ears, “Boo.”
He relaxed at the sound of his father’s voice being transmitted through the smart material of their suits. They could have communicated over radio, the quantum encryption package of their communications suite meant that anyone who intercepted it wouldn’t have been able to understand what they were saying.
However, that didn’t mean that people wouldn’t detect them talking with each other. The modern battlefield was littered with sensors for both sides. The moment they used their communications gear the enemy would know the general vicinity of where they were located and he could be sure that they wouldn’t wait long to send a welcome party.
The “Skin to Skin” signal sent through the material of their suits was virtually undetectable though. It produced so little EM emissions that what did leak out blended in with the cosmic background radiation. He thanked the science fiction novels he’d been reading recently for the ability to comprehend what that meant.
“You enjoy this shit too much dad.”
A chuckle was all the response that he received on that topic, “QEC is functioning, we’ve got our updated orders.”
“So what's the situation?” Sean asked, knowing that the QEC his father was equipped with gave him a secure means of communication with the command center, likely located somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin.
“The Ruskies pulled a fast one on us, deployed over ten thousand legacy armored units into this engagement.”
Sean’s eyes narrowed as he stared into the darkness and processed that information, “How the hell were they able to pull that off, they don’t have enough crews to serve all of those tanks.”
“How would you get a bunch of old school tanks into the fight?”
Sean fought the urge to turn and face his father, “I’d upgrade the ones with digital control systems so they could be operated by AI.”
“Ah, but remember, Trotsky doesn’t trust AI like we do.”
Sean nodded, not blaming the man for his reservations about something that could be easily overwritten and then turned against those it protected, “So what, they man a single tank in a formation and have that one act as a command-and-control unit for all the unmanned armored vehicles?”
“Damn I raised
you right.” His dad said, the pride clear in his voice.
Sean felt frustration rise, not at his father but at the sheer scale of the fight before them, “Command doesn’t think we can stop that do they?”
“Nope.”
“So why the hell did they have us drop behind enemy lines?”
A window popped up in his vision, a file transfer notice from his father’s suite. He opened it by focusing on it for a complete second. The file opened and updated his suit guidance system. Displayed before him was reconnaissance imagery of a large rectangular vehicle with multiple sets of tank treads supporting it. Communications gear ran along the top and he could make out several armored personnel carriers and dozens of Russian commando’s situated around it. The QEC upgrade they had applied to the system several years ago was impressive, allowing them to share larger volumes of imagery and information than previously would have been possible.
“Command and Control?”
“Yup and we’re going to destroy it.”
“Tough security force, even for the two of us.” Sean stated, preferring not to go out in a blaze of glory.
“Well then, thank God we brought the IMP right?” His dad said.
The Infantry portable Magnetically Propelled munition, or as the Marines had taken to calling it over the last several years, IMP, was their response to the armor advantage that so many of the hostile Spire families had over them. Sean was sure that Maria’s Land Dominance Units had been the priority for the development of the weapon system, especially after the battle of the New York Spire. Though no one had been foolish enough to bring that point up in his presence.
The IMP clung to the magnetic hard points along his back, its mounting hardware was along his father’s. The weapon fired a tungsten dart at nearly the same speeds as those launch by the tanks of the United States armed forces prior to the war.
General Kellen had decided that it would be faster and would be more appropriate for their man power restrictions to focus on maintaining their current, small arsenal of tanks and increase the lethality of his dismounted men and women. So the weapon system had been a priority project since they had left hiding and gained access to additional global resources.