Lines of Departure

by Marko Kloos

  “That’s one hell of a wait for two frontline troops,” I tell him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a war on.”

  “I don’t make the regs,” he says. “Fleet rule. So people don’t get hitched just before a drop to make sure their folks get the bonus.”

  “Wouldn’t want to fuck the government out of money by leaving a grieving spouse too soon,” Halley says. She chucks her military ID card onto the counter in front of the clerk. “Go ahead and file it, Corporal.”

  I get out my own ID and put it next to Halley’s. Then she looks at me, and her expression softens a little.

  “I’m not going to let it ruin my mood,” she says. “Let’s grab some more of that beer and head back to the berth. I want to fool around with my fiancé.”

  The personnel clerk takes our IDs and scans them into the admin console in front of him. A few moments later, we are officially engaged in the eyes of the fleet.

  “Clock’s ticking,” I say to Halley when we take our ID cards back from the clerk. “Now we just have to stay alive for another six months.”

  “Easier for me than you,” Halley says. “But I want you back here in six months. Whatever you have to do.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I say.

  “Whatever you have to do,” she repeats.

  “I promise I’ll be back in one hundred eighty days sharp.”

  “Better,” Halley says.

  CHAPTER 8

  The leaves I spend with Halley are always too short, but this one’s even shorter than usual, and by the time she has to go back to teaching young pilots how to stay alive, I report to the Transient Personnel Unit with great reluctance to wait for the arrival of my new ship.

  Once upon a time, when the fleet was water bound, a ship would return to its homeport after a deployment and stay in port for a while, to give the crews some downtime. The modern, spaceborne fleet doesn’t have enough hulls to allow such indulgences. Instead, every ship in the fleet has two full crews, called Gold and Blue, and switching them out is a swift and well-practiced process. The Manitoba is cleaned up, restocked, and ready for a new deployment only six days after I step aboard to report to my new command.

  “Our target,” Major Gould announces, “is Sirius Ad.”

  The briefing room erupts into a cacophony of murmurs as we process this information. The Sirius A system has been solidly Sino-Russian territory since shortly after the colonization waves started in earnest. It’s almost as much established enemy soil as St. Petersburg or Dalian.

  “The name of this operation is Hammerfall. For the last few years, we’ve been defending our own turf against their raids. Command figured that the time has come to let them have a taste of their own medicine.”

  “They’ll need to send along an empty fleet tender just for all the body bags,” my seat neighbor, a fellow combat controller sergeant named Macfee, says to me in a low voice, and I nod in agreement. The Sino-Russians are paranoid when it comes to planetary defenses. They set up fully integrated air- and space-defense networks before the first wave of civvie construction ships even touches down on a new colony. A place that’s been in their possession for eighty years is likely to be carpeted with defensive structures. There’s a reason why we mostly fight over the new real estate—the old colonies are tough nuts to crack, and they’re hardly ever worth the attendant butcher’s bill.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Major Gould says. “You’re thinking that this will be another Barnard’s Star. You’re also thinking that Command has lost the plot completely, and that the old man can afford to be all gung-ho because he won’t be bleeding down in the dirt with the rest of you.”

  There’s some chuckling from the SI troops in the front rows, but Macfee and I don’t join in, because Major Gould is pretty much right on the money. Barnard’s Star was a failed offensive three years ago. The NAC tried to take an ore-rich mining colony away from the SRA, and we got a severe mauling in the process. The attacking force expected a Russian regiment in garrison; they ran into a full Chinese combined arms brigade instead. Our forces attacked with force parity and suffered a three-to-one casualty rate.

  “Well, this won’t be another Barnard’s Star, and I’ll tell you why.”

  The major toggles the holographic display on the wall behind him, and it comes to life with a three-dimensional tactical display of our target planet.

  “First off, we have perfect intel this time. Fleet let us have three of those superexpensive new stealth recon drones, and they’ve been collecting data in-system for the last seventeen days. We also have a SigInt boat on station out there. We know the size of the planetary garrison, and their exact disposition on the surface. We know they have a visiting task force in orbit—a supply ship and the space control cruiser Kiev. We know the commanding officer’s name, how many times per week he hits the head for a shit, and what kind of reading material he takes along. Hell, I bet the SigInt guys can even tell you the enemy’s mess hall menu for the next two weeks.”

  He toggles a switch on his remote, and the display zooms out until Sirius Ad is just a speck in the center of the screen, and we see a general overview of the inner system.

  “Secondly—and this is kind of the big deal—we have figured out where their Alcubierre transit zones are located. That’s both inbound and outbound chutes.”

  Some of the troops present actually shout out in surprise at this revelation, and the room is once more abuzz with barely suppressed conversations. Major Gould smiles, clearly pleased with the reactions. Finding the enemy’s transit zones, the areas where their Alcubierre travel chutes enter and exit the system, is a major intelligence coup. The locations of a system’s transit zones are tightly guarded secrets, because an opposing force armed with that information can ambush a transiting fleet, or simply mine the transit zone to cut off a system from reinforcements. Getting bushwhacked while popping out of Alcubierre is a warship commander’s greatest fear.

  “Holy hell,” Sergeant Macfee says next to me. “If that’s true, we may actually clean their clocks for a change. I’m impressed.”

  “Military intelligence usually ain’t,” I remind him. “What do you want to bet they thought they had ‘perfect intel’ at Barnard’s Star, too?”

  “Here’s the rough sketch,” Major Gould continues. “We’re going to punch them in the nose, hard. For this one, we’ll be Carrier Task Force Seventy-Two. We’re going in with two Linebackers, two destroyers, a frigate, a minelayer, and one of the new Hammerhead space control cruisers. We’re also taking along the entire Second Regiment, Fifth SI Division. That’s in addition to our own Fourth Regiment.”

  I can’t remember when we last hit a target with half a brigade of troops dropping from space. Two full regiments of Spaceborne Infantry represent a fearsome amount of combat power: four thousand fighting troops in advanced battle armor, two wings of drop ships, four batteries of mobile field artillery, and two reinforced armor companies.

  “At this point, our Russian and Chinese friends are spread a little thin. They’ve been steadily shuffling troops from the established colonies to those mobile task forces they’ve been annoying us with. Right now, Intel says that the garrison down on Sirius Ad consists of a single understrength regiment, the Chinese 544th Combined Arms. They’re also dispersed all over that rock, so we can first hammer them from orbit, and then hit them with both our regiments in turn. With any luck, we’ll be facing an understrength company once the Shrikes are done with them.”

  Staff officers are notoriously overoptimistic in mission briefings, but I can’t help feeling just a little flare of hope that this mission won’t be quite the epic body-bag filler it had appeared to be at first. If our intel is good, and we can sew the system shut while we’re hammering the garrison, there’s even a chance Major Gould’s optimism is justified.

  “Once we transition in, the minelayer and a frigate escort are going to peel off and make straight for the enemy’s transition zones. Once there, they�
�ll salt the place with nuclear mines, and Sirius A will be ‘No Exit/No Entry’ for a while. The bulk of CTF Seventy-Two is going to continue to Sirius Ad, where we are going to engage and destroy the ships in orbit. After that, we hit the garrison from above, land the troops, and mop up whatever the Shrikes have left for us.”

  “And the other team is just going to lie down and take it,” I say to Macfee.

  “Soon as they figure out what’s happening, they’ll shove a whole fucking division through the chute to take the place back,” he replies. “Hell, we would.”

  “Be nice to pull one over on them for a change, though,” I say. “I’m getting sick of this chickenshit hit-and-run business.”

  “Mission briefings will commence soon,” Major Gould says. “We’re five days out from the chute to Sirius A, and ordnance will start flying as soon as we’re out of Alcubierre, so use the time wisely. Operation Hammerfall commences in one hundred and twenty hours. Get your gear ready for business, and check your PDPs for briefing schedules. Dismissed.”

  We spend the time to Alcubierre transition with maintenance, training, and the kind of recreational pursuits common among those about to go into battle. During the days, we’re at the firing range, in the shipboard gyms, or in our unit briefing rooms. In the evenings, we’re in the mess hall, the NCO club, and the makeshift gambling parlor some of the grease monkeys have set up clandestinely in a quiet corner of the storage hangar.

  Joining a new unit means being the new guy all over again, and having to earn everyone’s respect once more. I only have a few days to get to know the troops that will soon rely on me in battle. I suppose some people would keep their distance, knowing that five days aren’t enough to really bond with anyone, and that some of them most likely won’t come back from that mission anyway. I don’t keep to myself because I want to know as much as I can about people whose hide I may have to save, or who may have to save mine. We’re not motivated by money, and only the most naive or optimistic among us are convinced we’re on the winning side, sandwiched as we are between the Lankies and the Sino-Russians.

  I don’t believe the patriotic agitprop anymore—if I ever did—and I’m disgusted at the stupidity and shortsighted aggression on both sides, wasting lives and material by squabbling over whatever the Lankies haven’t taken away from us yet. I don’t think we’re any better than the SRA. Our motives aren’t any more noble than theirs, and our methods are the same. At the rate things are going, we have a few more years, a decade at the most, before all our colonies are swallowed by the Lankies, and we have nothing better to do with that borrowed time than to kill each other, like two spoiled kids fighting over how to divide their room while the house is burning down around them.

  Still, I drink and joke around with my new comrades, and I know that when the time comes, I will suit up with them, and drop into battle alongside them. I will do so terrified, but on my own free will, and maybe even with a measure of gladness.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat…”

  I’m already suited up and fully armed, and the announcement holds no added urgency to me, or to the rest of the regiment lined up on the hangar deck. We have been gearing up for our drop for the last two hours, and we’re ready for combat. In front of us, flight deck techs swarm all over the drop ships lined up to ferry us into battle, removing safety caps from ordnance fuses and autocannon muzzles. I check my kit for the thirtieth time—armor integrity, weapon status, comms gear function, oxygen levels, filter condition.

  The flight deck is a cavernous hall that takes up the entire bottom half of the ship almost from bow to stern, and it’s packed end to end with drop ships and troops. Each drop ship can ferry a platoon, and we’re dropping with a full regiment today. Twenty-four drop ships are running up their engines on the other side of the flight deck, the most I’ve ever seen parked wingtip to wingtip in one spot. As scary as it is to be part of an operation that actually requires the deployment of this much brute force, it’s also sort of exhilarating. I’m a cog in a machine, but on days like this, I’m reminded just how large and powerful a machine it is.

  “First Platoon, on your feet!”

  The platoon sergeant, SFC Ferguson, walks down the line of battle-ready SI troopers, patting the polymer shell of his M-66 rifle for emphasis.

  “Time to earn this month’s paychecks, boys and girls. I see any bolts cycling before I give the go-ahead, we will have the first casualties of the day.”

  I’m embedded with the First Platoon of Alpha Company, Fourth Spaceborne Infantry Regiment. We’re in the first attack wave, and Alpha Company is tasked with pinning down and destroying the garrison company entrenched in the third-largest settlement on Sirius Ad. Alpha Company is the sharp point of the spear, and that’s why they get one of the fleet’s three combat controllers along for the drop. Macfee is going in with a company of the Forty-Second Regiment, and the third combat controller assigned to the Manitoba is dropping with the command element of the Forty-Fourth. The grunts carry rifles, rocket launchers, and antiarmor missiles. We combat controllers carry radio suites and integrated TacLink computers that can practically remote-control Shrike attack birds and orbital ordnance. On the whole, the grunts are almost as protective of their embedded combat controllers as they are of their medics.

  The tail ramp of our drop ship opens with a soft hydraulic whine, and the ship’s crew chief steps out onto the ramp. He uses both his arms like signal sticks for taxiing aircraft, and waves us into the cargo hold of the waiting ship.

  “Double-line, double-time. Take your seats, buckle in, and stop the yapping,” Sergeant Ferguson shouts over the din of the dozens of engines warming up on the flight deck.

  We trot up the ramp and file into the cargo hold of the Wasp. There are two rows of seats, one on each side of the hold, so half the platoon sits facing the other half across the cargo bay. At this point, everyone’s helmet visors are lowered, in case the ship suffers a sudden hull breach. With the polarized filters of the visors, our faces are invisible to the others, and nobody has to pretend not to be nervous.

  When I drop out of a ship in a bio-pod, I shut down my sensor input and go completely dark until I hit atmo. On drop-ship ingress, I do the opposite. As our ship gets picked up by the docking clamps to be lowered into the drop bay, I turn on my tactical network computer and tap into the Manitoba’s TacLink. By the time we have settled in the bay to wait for the drop signal, my three-dimensional display shows me exactly what the main tactical plot in CIC is projecting. A warship’s battle plot looks like a tapestry of abstract symbols and vector lines to the uninitiated, but I’ve worked with tactical plots for so long that I can interpret the data while half asleep or fully drunk. It’s a completely alien way to see the world, but once you know how to read it, you become almost omniscient.

  When I bring up the main tactical plot on my helmet’s display, the attack is already under way. We are half a million kilometers from Sirius Ad, and the distance to the planet is shrinking rapidly as the Manitoba and her task force rush into drop position at top speed. In front of our force, the display shows only two enemy fleet units—one moving our way on an intercept course, the other running in the opposite direction. The Chinese supply ship is running for the Alcubierre chute, and the space control cruiser is going on the offensive to cover the retreat. It’s a valiant move, but one aging Chinese cruiser fighting it out with our supercarrier task force is merely a noble form of suicide. My fellow drop-ship passengers are unaware of the short and sharp clash of arms that is about to commence. Their world is limited to the windowless hull into which we are neatly packed like meal trays in a box of rations.

  When the Chinese cruiser reaches the outer edge of our antiship weapons envelope, our own cruiser, the NACS Alaska, starts launching her missiles. I see first eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two blue missile symbols emerging from the Alaska and rushing toward the enemy ship. One or t
wo of them would be enough to put the Chinese cruiser out of commission, but the SRA have pretty good point-defense systems on their ships, so fleet doctrine calls for saturating their defenses with the first strike. It’s a costly way of doing business, but even three dozen antiship missiles are a good trade for a space control cruiser.

  The Chinese don’t intend to roll over without putting up a fight. When our missiles have covered half the distance to the lone Chinese ship, a swarm of missile symbols emerge from the enemy unit, crimson vees to meet our blue ones. They fan out from the Shenzhen and rush toward our incoming barrage. Then the Shenzhen fires her own antiship missiles, her commander’s attempt to make sure he won’t show up in Valhalla alone today. Our two Linebacker ships take up the challenge, and start pumping their interceptor missiles into the intervening space, until the tactical plot is littered with red and blue vee symbols rushing to annihilate each other.

  The outcome of the battle is never in doubt. There are two or three blue missile symbols to every red one, and the Chinese cruiser has emptied her magazines, while our Linebackers are just getting warmed up. One by one, the red missile icons on the plot converge with blue ones and disappear along with them, until there are only blue vee shapes left. The Shenzhen dies silently and without drama on the sterile plot display. Six or eight of our cruiser’s volleyed antiship missiles converge on the red “CRUISER/HOSTILE” icon, and snuff it out of existence. Just like that, we have turned thirty thousand tons of starship and five hundred people into a cloud of orbital debris.

  “The Chinese cruiser just bit the dust,” I inform the platoon in my drop ship.

  There’s whooping and hollering, as if they have just heard the score in a sports event and their favored team is in the lead.

  With the cruiser out of the way, the task force moves in to begin the ground bombardment. Sirius Ad is a small planet, but it’s still two-thirds the size of Earth, and even with all the ordnance we’ve brought along on half a dozen warships, we wouldn’t be able to subdue the entire planet from orbit, unless we used a whole mess of hundred-megaton metroplex busters. Since we want to seize the place, not turn it into a radioactive wasteland, we need to apply our firepower more judiciously. The size of the planet works against the defenders as well—they can’t put a missile battery on every square kilometer of ground down there, and our recon drones have had three weeks to map out the defensive grid on the surface.