Star Crusades Uprising: The First Trilogy

by Michael G. Thomas

  “Yeah, the reports we were given from the survivors of the Titan mission said the suits were vulnerable to hits on some of the hydraulic sections and also there’s thinner plating near the ribs. We’ve not had time to fit in all the recommendations but we have sealed the biggest weaknesses and fitted the weapons as per the comments in the report,” explained the man as he continued making adjustments.

  Spartan continued on towards the group of marines at the end of the room. There were two platoons getting ready. The first was from Charlie Company and were readying their weapons and armour. Each marine wore a PDS suit and carried the marine’s standard issue L48 12.7mm assault rifle. The weapon used a twenty round magazine of variable operation ammunition and it was equally suited for short and long-range work. It had proven itself against a variety of enemies and types of armour. One marine in each squad carried the 6mm module and box magazine that modified the standard L48 rifle into a support weapon that could unleash massive quantities of lower calibre ammunition. It was normally used on board ships where hull penetration could be an issue.

  Several of the marines acknowledged him as he walked past the first group and up to where his own platoon was assembling. The unit was made up of three squads and led by Lieutenant Daniels. He was busy discussing some piece of equipment with the crew Chief. Spartan stopped and saluted.

  “Sergeant Spartan, glad to see you’re finally here. I thought we’d lost you.”

  “I’ve just finished speaking with Captain Mathews, he requested I join your unit, Sir.”

  “Yes...he did,” answered Daniels.

  The officer turned away and finished his discussion with the Chief before turning back to Spartan.

  “Contrary to what you might think, I am glad to have you here, Spartan,” he said as he handed over a datapad. “As you can see, we are to be dropped into the most violent and dangerous part of the battle on the surface.”

  Spartan examined the maps and dispositions in detail. The datapad viewed the events in real-time and the scale of the battle was enormous. The main part appeared to be about five hundred metres from the city limits where a collapsed tunnel forced the focal point of the enemy assault. Scores of marines and infantry were battling in the rubble but, even as Spartan watched, the enemy shock troopers were smashing their way through the thin lines of defenders.

  “How are the defences along the city limits coming along?” he asked.

  “We are working fast, but if they break through the outer marker they will be inside the city in minutes. We need to clear an area of two hundred and fifty metres wide for an hour so heavy weapons and minefields can be set up. General Shears is sending five companies of city militia to help but they will not be able to hold the line until the defences are finished.”

  One of the crew ran up to them and spoke directly to Spartan. The man was short and covered in grease and oil from working on the machines.

  “Your suit is ready, Sergeant.”

  Spartan nodded and turned back to the Lieutenant. “How long till we start the drop?”

  Daniels checked his watch before replying. “We will be over the drop point in eleven minutes, we start the drop immediately, you’d better get ready.”

  “Will do, good luck, Sir,” Spartan said as he delivered a crisp salute.

  As Daniels moved off to get himself ready the first three CES units stomped past. Each was much bigger than a man and looked like an armoured monster. They were all painted in grey but a few carried the personal markings and patterns of the squad and unit commanders. Spartan approached his own unit and pushed his legs inside. Two of the crew helped to fit him in as they clamped down the seals and plates around his body. It wasn’t a vehicle, more a heavy and augmented suit that was perfectly suited to hostile environments. As the metal rings around the neck locked into place he felt the air pressure change as the suit fully sealed. Through the metal reinforced visor he could see the crew hammering with tools as the last sections were clamped into place. One woman stopped in front of him and peered inside his helmet.

  “Sergeant Spartan, your suit has been modified as per the specifications in Private Morato’s paper. The welding and repair tools have been removed. We have retained one utility blade on the left arm mount and the right is fitted with twin L48 carbines. Both are loaded with 6mm box magazines and are linked through to the digging controls on the right panel.”

  Spartan looked about inside the suit and found the small bank of recently added switches. The job wasn’t pretty but for just a few days’ work it was impressive.

  “Good work, I’ll let you know how it all works out!”

  The woman banged her wrench on the helmet as a signal it was clear to move. Two more CES units marched past and Spartan moved in behind them as they filed ahead. Walking along the left side of the column of armoured marines were the men and woman of Charlie Company. In comparison their PDS suits looked puny and weak.

  The massive airlock door was open. It led to the loading bay for the landing craft. Each craft was heavily armoured and designed to carry a full platoon of over forty marines. In this particular action the CES units took up twice the space of a marine. Three of the mighty machines were waiting with their side ramps down for their passengers to board. The marines filed in, the CES units first and the rest of the marines squeezing in around them. Spartan approached the third craft and found he was the second CES unit to board the vessel. As he attached the clamps to his suit one of the marines spotted him.

  “Hey, Sergeant, thought you’d abandoned us!” shouted Harrison.

  He was one of the few marines he’d met in the last few days since arriving on the ship. He was a jovial character and one hell of a card player. Wherever Harrison was, Anthony always seemed to be there as well. Spartan looked around and sure enough he could see the other man. Then he saw two people he thought he’d managed to avoid for months. Burnett and Matt, two of the recruits from when he first joined.

  “Spartan?” The first one asked.

  He just looked at them. “Sergeant Spartan,” he answered.

  Burnett approached and looked through his helmet. “What’s your first name, dude?”

  “Sergeant,” he answered as he unclipped his right armoured hand swinging it around in front of the two marines.

  “What are you doing here?” A third man approached, he was tall and wearing a fire-scorched suit. It was a mark of pride to repair the damage but not to remove the marks on the exterior of armour. This man had seen some trouble. Spartan recognised him and relaxed.

  “It’s me, Marcus. A few of us were shipped over earlier today to fill out some of the units in the 5th. I take it you’ve already met these two?” he laughed.

  The two marines had already moved away and were talking to each other quietly. They’d found themselves in a fight with Spartan on the very first day and he had no doubt they were still looking for some kind of payback from the bloody nose he gave them. Marcus on the other hand was a different person altogether. They’d fought together on the Station and Marcus was injured during the assault.

  “What about the leg, I thought you’d been hit?”

  “Yeah, still hurts. Took a 9mm round in the calf. They patched me up though, managed to avoid any serious damage. Somebody up there still likes me!”

  The lights in the craft began flashing and the doors started to close shut.

  “Secure all gear and personnel, combat drop in sixty seconds,” came the voice over the speakers.

  With a loud clunk the doors shut and sealed. Almost as soon as they had shut the outer doors on the hull of the ship slid open to reveal the planet below. Spartan looked through the small slits running along the side of the craft to see the planet moving. The section the landing craft was on still rotated around the exterior of the ship. As he watched the planet appeared above and arced downwards. It was odd but the system was simple. The clamps would be released, the outwards force on the rotating section would cast the craft out into space, much like a pe
rson letting go on a merry go round though at much slower speeds.

  “5, 4, 3, 2...1,” came a computerised voice.

  With a shudder the craft released from the ship and pushed off towards Prime. From gaps running along the sides of his craft Spartan watched the other two landing craft launch and move into position along side them. Over twenty more were assembling in the little flotilla that would carry three full companies of commandos and CES units into action. A slight kick indicated the engines firing up and the craft accelerated into orbit and on its long arcing path through the atmosphere.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The development of capital ships started after the end of the Great War after one of the outer colonies in the Alpha Centauri had done the unthinkable and split from the Confederacy. For a time it looked like others would follow the example of Carthago and another war would split apart the fragile alliance. With eight rebel warships under their command they looked impregnable. It took an emergency flotilla to be assembled from every vessel still operational in the Alpha Centauri System and a violent battle that lasted three days before Carthago yielded. Since that fateful year the Confederate Navy has ensured it always controls larger, faster and more powerful vessels than those of the individual colonies.

  Origins of the Battlecruiser

  The CCS Crusader, the newest and deadliest ship in the Confederation military had just reached the outer markers around Kerberos, one of the eleven planets in the Proxima Centauri Star System. She was the flagship of the Confederate Navy and on her way home from the epic Siege of Titan after sustaining heavy damage and massive casualties. The battle had been unlike anything in the last fifty years and the repairs to the ship would probably takes months of hard work. The vessel moved into orbit around Kerberos as it steamed dust and debris from the dozens of damaged sections.

  From space the planet of Kerberos gave off an odd greenish blue glow. Many people in the Confederacy considered the planet to be the most Earth-like of all the worlds but it was actually very different. The gravity and atmosphere were comparable but the air was much thinner. This made it difficult for the elderly or people with respiratory problems. This was one of the many reasons why the limited surface area had been built on so fast, creating insulated buildings with improved air supplies. Since it had been colonised the single super continent had been built up with thousands of tall buildings, a testament to the massive factories and workshops dotting the landscape.

  Kerberos was an industrial world and although the factories and shipyards in Alpha Centauri were more famous for their quality and size, the new worlds in Proxima had proven cheap and competitive. The exports from the new colonies on Kerberos and Prime were almost reaching the same quantities of the old worlds. This growing competition increased the demands on the neighbouring planets and moons for raw materials. The massive increase in manufacturing had its problems though. The increase in mining and transport had created more than a few accidents. Even more of a problem was the never-ending scourge of pirates and organised crime. The riskier the businesses the more unsavoury the people involved were. Though Kerberos wasn’t the most populated of the planets it was where much of the technology and heavy equipment in the Proxima System was manufactured. Massive shipyards in orbit built transports and passenger liners that ploughed their way through the busy shipping lanes. One of the largest shipyards contained the half completed hulk of the sister battlecruiser to Crusader. This new vessel had already been lengthened by ten percent. This was to accommodate a set of hangars to carry either a number of gunboats or transports for marine detachments. A frigate was moored a short distance away keeping a watchful eye over the building project.

  The main shipping lanes had already been cleared to allow the remnants of the Fleet to move into position around the orbital shipyards. Normally the vessels would have stayed at the Titan Naval Station at Prime but the Station had been badly damaged during the battle and subsequent sabotage. It was quicker to limp to Kerberos than wait for the docks and yards to be repaired sufficiently to allow work on the warships. What normally would take a matter of seven or eight hours had taken the ship three days. The Crusader was massive, though in space its size was only apparent when she approached other vessels. The hull looked as if it was wrapped in a series of bands rotating in unison around the structure of the ship. These bands along the hull provided full and half gravity to the vessel and its crew. She normally travelled with a full complement of over two thousand personnel and two hundred heavily equipped marines. Following the battle with the captured battleship CCS Victorious, the Crusader had sustained very heavy damage and the casualties amongst the crew were terrible. One of the reactors was still leaking and over half of her weapon systems were burnt out or destroyed.

  Commander Anderson, the ship’s Executive Officer, was in command and his face showed sheer exhaustion from the last few days’ events. He was a man of slender build, with a freckled face and light brown unkempt hair. Like many of the naval officers he wore smartly trimmed sideburns and a small moustache. His uniform hadn’t been changed since the battle and it was crumpled and grubby. A dark bloodstain had smudged along the chest though it wasn’t clear whose blood it was. He was an experienced officer and had previously served with the Navy Cutter squadrons out in the wilderness on the Rim. It was an area of space that divided the colonised planets of Proxima and the outer gas giants. Much like the asteroid belt in the old Solar System it was packed with millions of tumbling rocks and asteroids, some the size of small planets and moons. The Rim was the heart of the mining and refining operations for many private corporations. With its many hiding places it had also become a haven for pirates and organised crime. There had once been a naval station there but it was destroyed in the Great War and never rebuilt. Commander Anderson had earned his reputation in a year-long campaign where he had led a wing of six cutters in the region. Operating from a modified frigate the group had captured over thirty known criminals as well as shutting down two of their bases. It had earned him the reputation as an aggressive but highly successful leader. He was a rising star in the Fleet. Becoming the executive officer on the CCS Crusader, the flagship of the entire Confederation Fleet, had been a great honour and the high point of his career. One day he hoped to command a vessel like the Crusader into battle at the head of a fleet. But for now he was babysitting the warhorse as she made her slow progress to the yards.

  In the last few days the tense and critical role of helping to manage such a massive vessel had turned into something much more exciting. Instead of managing crew rosters and weapon systems, he had been thrown into something much more violent than anything he had experienced so far. As well as assisting in the running of the tactical operations during the Siege of Titan, he had also been on the bridge during the epic battle with the rebel battleship CCS Victorious. The battle had lasted a long time and hundreds and hundreds of crew had been lost in the desperate broadsides and boarding actions. Though Crusader had emerged the victor the ship had sustained 427 dead and 719 wounded. Only 42 of the entire 200 man marine force on board had survived boarding actions and violent broadsides of the battle between the two massive capital ships. This meant the warship had lost over half of her crew, though many of the injured were still manning their posts as she limped home. The ship was now more a slow moving memorial to the dead and injured than a deadly warship capable of facing any known vessel.

  Until two days ago, Admiral Jarvis had still been aboard helping to organise the evacuation of the damaged and crippled warships. The Admiral had not been happy at sending the heavily damaged ship away, but with leaks in the reactor there was a chance the ship would lose power and end up dead in space. More ships were on their way from the rest of the Confederacy but it would be days before anything the size of the heavy cruiser or a battleship would arrive. Vessels of this size could conduct all kinds of missions from orbital bombardments to blockade management as well as the job they were mainly built for, combat against other vessels.


  With space operations now focused on the blockade of Prime and the transport of personnel to the surface she had since transferred her flag to the escort carrier CCS Wasp. This vessel was almost as large as the Crusader but it was optimised as an escort carrier. As well as being able to handle the heavy gunboats used to escort shuttles and landing craft, it was also designed to operate as a command ship for amphibious operations. From there the Admiral could work alongside General Rivers in coordinating the action on and around Prime.

  Hovering around the battered ship like a swarm of angry flies were gunboats of the Kerberos Squadron. This unit had already sent most of its warships to assist in operations at Prime. A number of the smaller vessels had remained, as well as the scores of gunboats that helped protect the infrastructure and ships orbiting the planet. The gunboats were tiny when compared to the warship but their size was deceptive. Each craft contained masses of weapons and electronic jamming equipment. In sufficient numbers they could take on small warships like cutters and frigates. Against civilian craft just one or two was enough to force a course change or demand inspections.

  On board the Crusader lights started to flash on the communication panel. Lieutenant Nilsson, a dark brown haired officer with distinctive, green tinted brown eyes, examined the data coming from her communication desk. At first she thought it was one of the many malfunctions stemming from the damage they had sustained in battle. It quickly became clear that the indications were pointing to a narrow band burst transmission from the planet’s surface. She turned to the Executive Officer.

  “Sir, I’m picking up encoded traffic on narrow band from the planet below.”

  The Commander walked towards her desk and examined the data himself. His face contorted in confusion.

  “I don’t understand. Narrow band is focused at a specific point. How are we picking it up unless it is meant for us?”