by John Ringo
“Whoa,” Butch said, looking around. He had a sudden desire, instantly overwhelmed, to take off his helmet and spit into the crater. “Mr. Purcell, we got ourselves another problem.”
“More than one,” Jinji said, pointing.
“What’s the problem?” Purcell asked tiredly.
“Well, I was gonna say there’s a great big crater where the missile tube used to be,” Butch answered. “But now I’m gonna ask if we’ve got shuttles working the surface.”
“No,” Purcell said. “Too much debris, not to mention the enemy’s still firing at us.”
“ ‘Kay,” Butch said. “Then we’d better figure out a way to close this door again. Which is gonna be tough cause we just cut it away.”
“Why?”
“I think we got Rangora Marines unloading.” Butch watched as the shuttle touched down and opened. At the distance it didn’t look much different than a Myrmidon. But the guys getting out didn’t move like humans. “Yep, we definitely got us Rangora Marines boarding, Mr. Purcell.”
“Get your team out of there.”
“Oh, hell, yeah. And we’re welding the doors shut after us.”
* * * *
“Rangora landings reported in sectors Two and East,” General Denny said, standing up. “Moving to my own command post, sir.”
“Roger, General,” Admiral Clemons said. “Rather keep them out of the main bay.”
“Airb ... Gung ho, sir.”
“You can take the boy out of the airborne...” Admiral Clemons muttered. “Commodore Guptill, what’s the status on repair?”
“Winding down, what with the landings,” Guptill replied. “We’ve had three teams taken under fire by the Rangora. Most of the rest have had to pull back. Only fourteen tubes totally open.”
“It occurs to me that there is quite a bit of power in a Thunderbolt,” Admiral Clemons said. “Razor.”
“Sir?” Captain Blades said.
“Open all functional doors on all missile tubes.”
“That’s going to give the Rangora a direct route to our magazines, sir,” Commodore Guptill pointed out.
“Understood,” Clemons said. “All tubes open?”
“All tubes open, sir,” Blades said.
“Prepare to fire all tubes, all sectors,” Clemons said. “Max repeat.”
“The closed tubes...” Commodore Guptill said.
“Are either going to get the hell open or blown the hell up,” Clemons said. “And I don’t really care which. Jack these lizard sons-of-bitches up. Fire.”
* * * *
Sergeant Ghezhosil, Rangoran Imperial Space Infantry, had seen his fair share of utter bloody screw-ups on the part of High Command. He’d been on the Tuxughah drop when the Glatun defense planet had been “fully reduced” and it was time to send in the ground forces.
“Fully reduced” had turned out to be something of an exaggeration. Half a damned division had been blown out of the Tuxughah sky before Command had ordered the drop stopped. In the middle. Which meant shuttles trying to claw their way out of a fire basket and back into space.
Yeah, good call there, General Magamaj.
Ghezhosil had already been on the ground. He was a capsule drop specialist, one of the few left alive in the whole damned force at this point. Two days of running around in the ruins of cities, hoping like hell his own people wouldn’t drop a KEW on him and trying to avoid the just really seriously pissy Glatun ground forces that were chasing his squad.
Great call there, General Magamaj. Fortunately, the humans had sent the dumb genetic reject to a well-deserved grave. From what Ghezhosil heard, there hadn’t been much left of his command AV that wasn’t gas.
Then there was Jittan, where the brilliant strategists of High Command had decided that the Jittan Battlestation needed to be captured rather than just blown the hell out of space.
But the Jittan Battlestation had been barely two kilometers on a side. Heavily armed and with, as it turned out, a full division of Glatun Marines onboard, not the battalion they’d been told to expect. But it was doable.
It was not nine kilometers across, made mostly of nickel iron and spinning like a useless damned fep. Just keeping his useless, still-wet-from-the-egg noobs from flipping off this gigantic ball bearing was hard enough. Although most of them weren’t good for more than space garbage.
“Where’s the missile tube, Sergeant?” Mishshocee whined. Mishshocee was not the image of Rangora’s Elite Space Infantry. None of the new chums were. They were whatever gutter crap the press gangs could sweep up. Nobody in their right mind joined the SI or the AV forces anymore. High Command might think that the massive casualties of the Glatun war were “secret” but everybody knew somebody who’d died. When you started doing the math... When you started doing the math you ran like hell when the press gangs came around. Which meant they were only catching the slow ones.
“It’s the big cave looking thing under your feet, dumb shit,” Ghezhosil said, “Just set up the—”
Fortunately he had his back to the tube and his armor caught the blast. Mishshocee and most of the new chums weren’t so lucky. As Ghezhosil drifted up into space he could see their blown-up bodies scattered around the supposedly closed missile tube. It took him a moment to realize that what looked sort of like a dim laser coming up from the tube was missiles, stacked practically nose to nose and already moving faster than the eye could follow.
“Platoon, we have a problem,” he commed as he started the process of getting his feet back onto the spinning station. Gods knew where he was going to land.
* * * *
“Missile launch from Thermopylae,” FleetTac reported. “Multiple tubes. High rate. Six,.. ten... thousands of missiles inbound at the fleet.”
On the screens the previously quiescent battlestation was now a mass of expelling gas as if the spinning ball was now gushing volcanoes in every direction.
“They appear to be blowing some of their missile tubes open with their missiles,” Admiral Cirazhesh said. “This race is simply insane.”
“What does it take to kill this thing?” General Sho’Duphuder asked rhetorically.
“About ninety gigatons applied in less than a second and a half,” To’Jopeviq muttered to himself. “That was in the briefing. Shift the AVs to cover the retreat of the...” He stopped when he recognized the futility.
“Perhaps you should be in command,” Beor said, rippling her scales. “Your point about surviving this is now taken to heart.”
“Shift the AVs to provide missile defense forward of the fleet,” General Sho’Duphuder said. “Maneuver to open the range to the Thermopylae. We’ll stand off and let her run through her missiles, then move back in.”
“Missile production rate of four hundred per minute,” To’Jopeviq muttered. “Two thousand civilian construction personnel and nine thousand robots available for repair duties.”
“It can’t maneuver, though,” Beor pointed out.
“Why do I think they’ll figure out a way? Two converted Aggressor squadrons for that matter.”
“Major To’Jopeviq,” General Sho’Duphuder commed.
“Sir?”
“Suggestions?”
“Stand off as you said, sir. And tell the Marines to hurry.”
* * * *
“Get your ass in there,” Ghezhosil said, kicking the private in his posterior in emphasis.
He’d managed to get back on the fortress. Not near anything, but back down. Then, after a bit of walking, he found a squad of infantry that had somehow managed to “lose” their sergeant and were huddling in one of the missile craters on the surface. Since he was pretty sure “lose” meant “kill” he was keeping them in front of him at all times.
After that it was just a matter of finding a door. There were maintenance doors on the surface. He’d found somebody in this rat screw to tell him where the nearest one was and gotten it open. Now it was just a matter of getting these useless feck to go into the interior.
“You don’t have to know!” Ghezhosil said, shooting the useless feck in the back. He unlocked the body’s boots, then kicked it to drift off with the rest of the garbage. “Does anyone else have a stupid question? Now move it, you mammals!”
He waited until the last of the crack shell bastards were moving then commed higher.
“Sergeant Ghezhosil, sector fourteen higher?”
“Sector Fourteen. You’re designated for sector five, Sergeant. You’re not even in this brigade.”
“Roger. Got blown off by an explosion, sir. Lost my squad. Found another group of lost shen. Back in the fight, sir. Question, sir. What is the objective in this AO?”
“Make penetration, determine local resistance, then report.”
Intel? We don’t need no stinking intel!
“Roger that, sir. Will do, sir. Ghezhosil out...We’re just disposable intel probes...Why couldn’t they just use robots and be done with it?”
* * * *
“I kin see!” Captain Blades said. “Sir, AVs maneuvering to provide antimissile defense. Fleet had been closing. It’s now maneuvering to get out of our fire basket. And we’ve got a really notable velocity completely out of the battle. Range to main Rangora fleet nearly seventy thousand kilometers.”
“Our missiles will have a hell of a head on them by the time they arrive,” Admiral Clemons said. “What’s the status of enemy missiles?”
“AVs and Aggressor squadrons are returning fire set to intercept, sir,” Blades said. “They look as if they’re at max rate. That will run them dry in less than two minutes. Our missiles are taking a pounding on the way in, though, sir.”
“Set ours to fire and hold playing defense,” Admiral Clemons said. “Fire all tubes, all magazines, external to the Therm on hold, set to shadow the main fleet at three hundred thousand meters. Usual evasion maneuvering but conserve power. Soak up their missiles and give their heavies something to worry about.”
“Shadow play, aye, sir,” Blades said, comming the commands to his department.
“Commodore Guptill.”
“Sir?”
“What’s the status on the main door?”
“Haven’t checked, recently. Probably spot welded shut from the impacts.”
“Get it unwelded. Oh, and Blades. Send some missiles through with an update to Sol system. See if the Troia want to join the battle.”
* * * *
“I suppose there wasn’t anything else he could say,” Kinyon said, shaking his head. “Does SDC have this?”
“Yes, sir,” Commodore Pounders said. “Incoming from SolDef, sir.”
“Admiral,” Marshall Robert Hampson said. Virtually every military on Earth used the term “Marshall” for five star and above generals. It was rumored that General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Joint Chiefs during WW Two, had been the one to force the change to “General of the Armies.” He pointedly refused to be called “Marshall Marshall.”
The newly promoted five-star commander of Sol Defense Command was the former Marine commandant, but he could hum the tune of space battles and he didn’t really care what his rank was called. “Boss” worked fine.
“What do you think of Admiral Clemons’ plan?”
“I think he could use some help, Marshall,” Kinyon said. “And there was one thing he left out. The Rangora aren’t the only ones that can create a missile swarm.”
“That will leave the system virtually defenseless, Admiral,” Hampson pointed out.
“Except for SAPL, one fully operational Death Star, one partially operational, the BDA net, two in-system BBGs...”
“Approved,” Hampson said. “Tell your crews to kick ass and G-2 would like some names.”
“Aye, aye, Marshall. Commodore, order Captain Sharp to begin full fire on all missile tubes, missiles holding inside the ring interdiction zone. And get me Admiral Marchant.”
* * * *
“Seat load!” Thermal commed. “All hands evolution!”
“Mother of the Christ,” Angelito muttered. “Not seat loading.”
“Fall into the tube, Angel,” Dana said. “Just another beautiful day in the Space Navy.”
Loading combat seats, not to mention unloading them, was one of the biggest pains in shuttle operations. Especially when you were working off a tube system.
The seats themselves weren’t individually that big an issue. They came in compact form, about the size of a large suitcase. And while massy, they had grab handles to move them. Putting them in place was, literally a snap. The lower grab handles doubled as primary lock-down points. Snap the box into place and leave it. Opening them up was up to the Marines.
It was the fact that they weren’t stored right by the boats, no room in the tube, and there were thirty-eight of them for each shuttle that was the pain.
Dana set the boat to microgravity and swam to the tube, getting into place for the grab.
The shuttles ringed the tube in groups of four, each supposed to represent a division. The crews, two by two, mostly bitching, fell out into the tube and took up their positions. The coxswain down-tube from their boat’s docking point, the engineer at the hatch.
Meanwhile, the rest of the flight, all the “clerks and jerks” from the flight clerk to the supply PO, were lining up outside the tube.
Then the seats started flying. There were just enough support personnel to reach the supply room for the chairs. They began chaining them to the tube where the chairs were then moved hand over hand to the shuttles.
The problem, as always, was that this was micro. And somebody inevitably missed a catch.
“Dutchman chair!” Dana caroled, hooking both feet to both pass her current chair and grab the one floating down the tube. That required some pretty complicated three dimensional maneuvering. “Who owes a shot?”
“Garcia!”
“Wasn’t me! Panchez threw it past me!”
“Referee says?” Dana called.
“Panchez,” Diaz replied. “Bad pass.”
“PANCHEZ BUYS THE SHOTS!”
The engineer’s job, starting from Boat Forty and working back, was to “simply” flip the chairs into the cargo compartment. The problem was, they had a definite inertia “down-tube” and getting them to change it was... difficult.
Since the final pass was from coxswain to engineer, some of the One-Four-Three crews had tended to make a game of it, adding a good bit of velocity, or spin, to the final pass to mess up their engineer’s pass.
It was one thing that Dana had put a stop to, fast, in her division. An all hands chair load meant things were about to hit the fan or at least to practice for it. Not only did they need to concentrate their efforts on loading, and loading fast, the last thing a shuttle needed was two people having a fight over who did a bad pass when they were going into combat.
Chief Barnett had, back on the Troy, once waxed fairly philosophical about what, to Dana, was a pretty obvious maneuver. She called it “a classic example of systemology,” whatever that was. “The fine tuning of the smallest tasks to ensure systemology software integrates smoothly with hardware.”
All Dana cared was that she’d finally gotten Angelito to quit putting English on the chairs. And when the heat had come down, hard, slowly the rest of the unit followed her example.
Moving the chairs down-tube was easy enough and could be done from a well-balanced two-point connection with one of the monkey bars.
To pass to the shuttle required a three-point connection. Two feet on a monkey bar, left hand holding on. Catch the chair with one hand, decelerate and redirect into the interior. It took about the same effort, if different muscle groups, as tossing hay bales. Which meant it was very aerobic. And working up a sweat in a space suit was never fun.
As the end boats got filled, the crews moved into the boats farther “up-tube,” helping the crews get their chairs in. When and only when all boats were loaded, divisions worked together getti
ng them dogged down.
As far as Dana knew, there was no task specifically designated “chair loading.” There certainly wasn’t a condition and standard in the SOP. But she thought that the One-Four-Three was getting pretty good at it.
Once all the shuttles were filled, Dana got the remnants of her division back onto their boats and started latch-down procedures. They usually used two crews on one shuttle—more were a bother rather than an aid—so she had Twenty-Two and Twenty-Four team up while she and Angelito worked on Twenty-Three.